Description

Installs the cron package and starts the crond service.

Requirements

Platforms:

• RHEL family
• Debian family

Provider and Defining Jobs

You can use the cron_job provider or define cron jobs within your chef configuration. In your configuration, you can define basic cron jobs or point to custom files that define cron jobs.

cron_job provider

cron_job name do
    jobinfo params
end

where name is a unique name for the job and params is a hash of the following. Time parameters default to "*"

minute
hour
day
month
weekday
command

Defining cron jobs in configuration

1. For basic cron jobs, you can use the cron_job provider multiple times by defining node[:cron][:crond] with a hash of name => cron_job hash pairs.

    "cron": {
        "crond": {
            "echo": {
                "minute": "5",
                "command": "echo This is a job that runs every hour at 5 minutes past the hour"
            }
        }
    }
   

2. Or you can enter the exact lines you would like to appear in /etc/crontab by defining a list of lines under node[:cron][:crontab_lines].

    "cron": {
        "crontab_lines": [
            "5 * * * * echo This is a job that runs every hour at 5 minutes past the hour"
        ]
    }
   

3. For custom cron jobs, and to use variables, create a template in templates/<default>/etc/cron.d/#{name}.erb. Make sure any template variables you include in the template are defined in your configuration. Enter any such custom jobs you want to run as a list under node[:cron][:predefined]. For example, this would render custom-job.erb and add it to /etc/cron.d/custom-job on the host. An example for sending email using the django-mailer project is included, but it depends on custom variables being defined in your node configuration.

    "cron": {
        "predefined": ["custom-job"]
    }
   

License and Author

Original Author:: Joshua Timberman ([email protected])

Copyright 2010-2012, Opscode, Inc.

Provider and Defining Jobs:: David Marble ([email protected])

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.