I accidentally ran crontab -r

Geminias · 07-21-2014, 07:05 AM

Hi guys, I just ran crontab -r thinking it would let me select the cron task to delete, but instead it seems to have deleted all the cron jobs. These jobs were manually installed (not the system defaults). Is there anyway to recover the previous crontab?

repo · 07-21-2014, 07:17 AM

Any backup?
You could try to look in the logfiles to see the excecuted crons in the past.

Kind regards

Geminias · 07-21-2014, 07:28 AM

Oh thank god, whoever originally setup the cronjobs was a genius! He made a cron job that copied the crontab into a backup. This is so brilliant because if you accidentally delete the crontab, then the job will no longer run, and the latest crontab will be preserved

TB0ne · 07-21-2014, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geminias

Oh thank god, whoever originally setup the cronjobs was a genius! He made a cron job that copied the crontab into a backup. This is so brilliant because if you accidentally delete the crontab, then the job will no longer run, and the latest crontab will be preserved

Glad your problem was resolved, but you do realize that you've just hinted at a MUCH larger issue, right???

If you've only got one script, backing up one aspect of your system, you are just WAITING for something bad to happen at this point. Make sure you have working, verifiable backups taking place. If you're the new administrator, start off right.

suicidaleggroll · 07-21-2014, 10:10 AM

FWIW - all crontabs are stored in /var/spool/cron/. If you make a regular backup of that directory you'll be covered in cases like this.