cron Cookbook

Installs the cron package and starts the crond service.

Requirements

Platforms

• RHEL family
• Debian family
• Solaris family
• FreeBSD

Chef

• Chef 12.1+

Cookbooks

• none

Resources and Providers

cron_d

The cron_d LWRP can be used to manage files in /etc/cron.d. It supports the same interface as Chef's built-in cron resource:

cron_d 'daily-usage-report' do
  minute  0
  hour    23
  command '/srv/app/scripts/daily_report'
  user    'appuser'
end

Note: FreeBSD does not support cron.d functionality, so it is emulated. cron fragments are created in /etc/cron.d, then they are concatenated together into /etc/crontab. FreeBSD puts some core OS functionality into /etc/crontab, so the original file is copied to /etc/crontab.os_source, and included in the concatenation.

Note: This LWRP does not function on Solaris platforms because they do not support running jobs stored in /etc/cron.d. Any Solaris users are welcome to test the emulate_cron.d functionality that was implemented for FreeBSD. See defaults/attributes.rb for more information.

Attributes

• minute, hour, day, month, weekday - schedule your cron job. These correspond exactly to their equivalents in the crontab file. All default to "*".
• predefined_value - schedule your cron job with one of the special predefined value instead of ** * pattern. This correspond to "@reboot", "@yearly", "@annually", "@monthly", "@weekly", "@daily", "@midnight" or "@hourly".
• command - the command to run. Required.
• user - the user to run as. Defaults to "root".
• mailto, path, home, shell - set the corresponding environment variables in the cron.d file. No default.
• environment - a Hash containing additional arbitrary environment variables under which the cron job will be run (similar to the shell LWRP). No default.
• mode - the octal mode of the generated crontab file. Defaults to 0644.

Definitions

cron_manage

The cron_manage definition can be used to manage the /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny files. Incude this cookbook as dependency to your cookbook and execute the definition as:

The following will add the user mike to the /etc/cron.allow file:

cron_manage 'mike' do
  user   'mike'
  action :allow
end

The following will add the user john to the /etc/cron.deny file:

cron_manage 'john' do
  user  'john'  #optional, resource name will be used if not specified.
  action :deny  #optional, deny is the default
end

Attributes

• user - username that you want to control (optional).
• action - :allow or :deny. :deny is the default.

License & Authors

• Author:: Cookbook Engineering Team (cookbooks@chef.io)

Copyright 2010-2016, Chef Software, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.