mkdir: cannot create directory: No such file or directory - cifs windows shared folder

Question

I have a linux box here that i've set up with a cifs shared folder to my windows computer. No issues there, it works exactly as intended. However, i thought about running some bash scripts using that same directory and it seems like it's not finding my root.

now=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d") 
#or: `now=$(date +%s)` if you back up more than once a day

mkdir /__backup/"$now"

Doing this from the shared folder brings up that it cannot find directory runningthese commands:

echo "$0"
dirname "$0"

shows the address as "."

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get this to run?

Answer 1

You are doing:

#!/bin/bash
now=`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`
mkdir "/__backup/$now"

So this only works if /__backup/ exists. Do:

#!/bin/bash
now=`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`
mkdir -p "/__backup/$now" # -p creates parent directories as needed (see man mkdir)

#Optional: change directory to the one you just created:
cd /__backup/$now

Of course, you will need root to make a directory in /, so you might want to check for that.

if [ `whoami` = "root" ]; then
    # You are root...
else
    echo "Error: Only root can do that."
    exit 1
fi

You can avoid the whole problem of needing root if you create __backup in ~. You might also want to hide __backup by renaming it to .backup.