Ubuntu Cron ec2-create-snapshot

Question

I have a new ec2 Ubuntu instance running. I have properly set up the ec2-api tools. I want to create a daily backup using the ec2-create-snapshot command. Just to test it, I have my script, which is named dailyBackup, and located in the /etc/cron.daily directory. I have the chmod +x permissions set.
Its recognized when I do:

run-parts --test /etc/cron.daily

When I run the following script as such:

. dailybackUp

Code within dailyBackup

#!/bin/bash
#This creates a backup of the root and xvdf volumes associated with this instance.
echo "Modifying the timezone to us-west-2..."
export EC2_URL=https://ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
echo "Creating daily backup for root volume"
ec2-create-snapshot vol-id --description "SkySpark Linux Daily Backup Root"
echo "Creating daily backup for storage  volume"
ec2-create-snapshot vol-id--description " SkySpark Linux Daily Backup Storage "

I've omitted the volume ids, but, they're correct in my file.

It works just fine. This is the behavior I want. It backs up the volumes and I am able to view them in the console. I want this to occur daily. But, I have to manually call my script. It doesn't automatically get executed daily as I'd expect. Am I missing a step? Are my files configured incorrectly? Is the ec2-create-snapshot command unable to be executed in a job? Do I need to do something with cron?

Question also asked here.

Answer 1

I got the answer. I set up the postfix email service, and at once I was able to see the problem. It had nothing to do with root owning the file

You need to export the passwords in order to use the ec2 tools. I put the following at the top of my script, and now it works perfectly.

 export AWS_ACCESS_KEY="xxxxxxxxxxx"
 export AWS_SECRET_KEY="xxxxxxxxxxxxx"