NCM::Component::cron

NAME

ncm-cron – NCM component to control cron entries for Linux and Solaris.

DESCRIPTION

The cron component manages files in the /etc/cron.d directory on Linux and the /var/spool/cron/crontabs directory on Solaris.

Linux

Files managed by ncm-cron will have the .ncm-cron.cron suffix. Other files in the directory are not affected by this component. The name of each file will be taken from the name attribute.

Solaris

Solaris uses an older version of cron that does not make use of a cron.d directory for crontabs. ncm-cron shares the crontab with each user. To make this work ncm-cron uses the concept of separate file sections within the crontab. Each section is identified by the use of the tags NCM-CRON BEGIN: and NCM-CRON END:. Entries either side of these section identifiers are not modified.

Solaris does have a /etc/cron.d directory, however it uses this directory for control files such as cron.allow and cron.deny.

EXAMPLE

"/software/components/cron/entries" = list(
  dict(
    "name", "ls",
    "user", "root",
    "group", "root",
    "frequency", "*/2 * * * *",
    "command", "/bin/ls"),
  dict(
    "name", "hostname",
    "comment", "some interesting text",
    "frequency", "*/2 * * * *",
    "command", "/bin/hostname"),
    "env", dict("MAILTO", "admin@example.org"),
  dict(
    "name", "date",
    "comment", "runs the date sometime within a 3 hour period",
    "timing", dict(
        "minute", "0",
        "hour", "1",
        "smear", 180),
    "command", "/bin/date")
  );

On Linux this will create three files in /etc/cron.d:

ls.ncm-cron.cron
hostname.ncm-cron.cron
date.ncm-cron.cron

On Solaris three extra entries will be added to the root crontab.

Solaris

Editing the NCM-CRON BEGIN: and/or the NCM-CRON END: tag within a crontab will cause unpredictable behaviour. Possible behavours are duplicate entries or entries being removed altogether.

Editing BETWEEN the tags will cause the edits to be overwritten the next time ncm-cron runs.