A hack to mail yourself the log could be as simple as adding this to the end of the cron job (note semicolon before mail):

;mail -s “Backup Report” you@you.com < /path/to/logfile.txt

If you wanted start time, stop time, bytes transferred, a simple bash wrapper should be able to achieve this, write start time to a variable, run the rsync command and pipe output to log file, write stop time to variable and then ‘tail -1 /path/to/logfile’ to a variable. Throw those variables into a /tmp file and then have the script call the mail command as above, piping the /tmp file in as input. Script then cleans up the /tmp file and jobs done.

Though there is probably a much easier way of doing it, just like all good things in linux you can do them a million ways and still be ‘right’ as long as it works well for you.

I’ve got everything running perfectly and am now wanting to take it to the next level.

I’ve removed ’2>&1′ in order to recieve an email when the sync in complete, but all I’m getting through at the moment is: ‘stdin: is not a tty’ in the email body. The sync is completing properly however, and all the appropriate data is being written in the text file.

What I’d like is the email to say something along the lines of:
Time taken: x
Data transfered: y

and that’s about it. Any tips?