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linuxcronansible

Configure cron with Ansible

I thought it will be a piece of cake to configure crontab with Ansible cron module, but there is something I can't understand.

This is simple task I wrote:

- name: Add job triggering logs rotation.
  cron:
    name: 'logrotate'
    minute: '*/2'
    job: '/etc/cron.daily/logrotate'
    state: present
  tags: cronjob

When I run it the output from Ansible was successful as I thought:

TASK [cron : Add job triggering logs rotation.] **************************************************************************************
task path: /home/vagrant/ansible/roles/cron/tasks/main.yml:3
Thursday 19 December 2019  19:31:05 +0000 (0:00:00.023)       0:00:02.427 *****
Using module file /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible/modules/system/cron.py
<127.0.0.1> ESTABLISH SSH CONNECTION FOR USER: None
<127.0.0.1> SSH: EXEC ssh -C -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPersist=60s -o KbdInteractiveAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=gssapi-with-mic,gssapi-keyex,hostbased,publickey -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o ConnectTimeout=10 -o 127.0.0.1 '/bin/sh -c '"'"'sudo -H -S -u root /bin/sh -c '"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'echo BECOME-SUCCESS-; /usr/bin/python'"'"'"'"'"'"'"'"' && sleep 0'"'"''
Escalation succeeded
<127.0.0.1> (0, b'\n{"envs": [], "invocation": {"module_args": {"name": "logrotate", "insertbefore": null, "state": "present", "cron_file": null, "reboot": false, "hour": "*", "month": "*", "disabled": false, "job": "/etc/cron.daily/logrotate", "special_time": null, "user": null, "env": null, "insertafter": null, "backup": false, "day": "*", "minute": "*/2", "weekday": "*"}}, "changed": true, "jobs": ["logrotate"], "warnings": []}\n', b'')
changed: [127.0.0.1] => {
    "changed": true,
    "envs": [],
    "invocation": {
        "module_args": {
            "backup": false,
            "cron_file": null,
            "day": "*",
            "disabled": false,
            "env": null,
            "hour": "*",
            "insertafter": null,
            "insertbefore": null,
            "job": "/etc/cron.daily/logrotate",
            "minute": "*/2",
            "month": "*",
            "name": "logrotate",
            "reboot": false,
            "special_time": null,
            "state": "present",
            "user": null,
            "weekday": "*"
        }
    },
    "jobs": [
        "logrotate"
    ]
}

However, when I check /etc/crontab/ the output is not there.

The thing I want to achieve is to have this in /etc/crontab/:

*/5 * * * * /etc/cron.daily/logrotate

By default is should add this job to root crontab, but I check also my user contab to be sure if it is not there and it's not.

Now, every time I try to run task, Ansible output is OK. I don't know where was it added and have no idea what went wrong.

Any idea what happened?

Solution

  • the way you defined the ansible task will create the job in the users default cronfile. You can look at it with "crontab -l" oder edit it with "crontab -e". You can put it into the "/etc/cron.d"-Folder when you use the "cron_file" option. Take a look at https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/cron_module.html