How to run gpg from a script run by cron?

Question

I have a script that has a part that looks like that:

for file in `ls *.tar.gz`; do
  echo encrypting $file
  gpg --passphrase-file /home/$USER/.gnupg/backup-pas         


        

Answer 1

You should make sure that GPG is in your path when the cronjob is running. Your best guess would be do get the full path of GPG (by doing which gpg) and running it using the full path (for example /usr/bin/gpp...).

Some other debugging tips:

• output the value of $? after running GPG (like this: echo "$?"). This gives you the exit code, which should be 0, if it succeded
• redirect the STDERR to STDOUT for GPG and then redirect STDOUT to a file, to inspect any error messages which might get printed (you can do this a command line: /usr/bin/gpg ... 2>&1 >> gpg.log)