crarchive

Crarchive is a useful software solution designed to solve a particular issue with cron. Suppose you have a line in your crontab that performs a backup of a directory. The problem is that rsync, which handles the backups, generates a lot of output, especially with the -v switch. As a result, cron sends an email with the results of the backup every day. Most people redirect the output to /dev/null to avoid clogging their inboxes. However, with crarchive, you can view the output without cluttering your inbox.

Crarchive is a script that logs the results of cron runs in a folder, compresses old logs, and deletes logs that are too old automatically. It allows the output of commands run in cron to be saved and archived in a more organized manner. Furthermore, crarchive will not compromise your email inbox, as it archives the logs in a separate folder instead. In the future, crarchive will also support more customization options.

Currently, crarchive has a few limitations, including one run per day, logs to $HOME/logs (unmodifiable), and zips logs that are one-day-old while deleting logs that are thirty (unmodifiable). If anything goes wrong, crarchive will send an email update, albeit with primitive error checking in this early version.

To use crarchive, install the software into /usr/bin and enter a usage example similar to the crontab from earlier. Name the command whatever you wish, and crarchive will archive the logs and store them in a separate folder. Overall, crarchive is a small script that can solve a small problem with cron and avoid inbox clutter.