[SOLVED] ansible

czezz · 12-28-2020, 10:22 AM

Im having a problem with ansible while adding entry to crontab for user: user1.
Entry is added, however for some reason between execution time and a command, user1 is added.
Please see following result:

Code:

#Ansible: script1.sh
0 1 * * 1 user1 /mnt/sync/script1.sh

Does anyone understand what am I doing wrong?
I tried to kick out line: user: user1 but then execution fails.

This is the code of: tasks/script1.yml

Code:

---

- name: create file and add crontab entry
  file:
    path: "/mnt/sync/script1.sh"
    state: directory
    mode: '0755'

- name: upload script1.sh
  copy:
    src: "script1.sh"
    dest: "/mnt/sync/script1.sh"
    mode: 755
    owner: user1
    group: group1
    backup: yes

- name: cron job to for script1.sh
  cron:
    name: script1
    weekday: "1"
    hour: "1"
    cron_file: "/var/spool/cron/user1"
    user: user1
    job: "/mnt/sync/script1.sh"

NevemTeve · 12-28-2020, 11:03 AM

Could you solve this without ansible?

pan64 · 12-28-2020, 11:36 AM

is it a problem at all?
see man crontab:

Quote:

The jobs in cron.d and /etc/crontab are system jobs, which are used usually for more than one user, thus, additionally the username is needed.

czezz · 12-28-2020, 01:27 PM

Hi guys, thank you for your replies.

@NevemTeve - it must be done via ansible.
@pan64 - if I keep username (between time and command), cron job execution will fail. Once i manually remove username, it works.

It puzzles me from where ansible takes this user1???

marav · 12-28-2020, 05:55 PM

Hi,

My suggestions are :
you should use double quote only for variable values
Ex/

Code:

dest: /mnt/sync
or 
dest: "{{ my_dest }}"

Why is your path pointing to a script and not a directory (/mnt/sync) ?
This is similar to touch a file, in your playbook this is useless because of the state

Code:

- name: create file and add crontab entry
  file:
    path: "/mnt/sync/script1.sh"
    state: directory
    ...

You'd better use 'template' module (jinja2) compared to 'copy'

Code:

template:
  src: script1.sh.j2
  dest: /mnt/sync/script1.sh
  ...

czezz · 12-29-2020, 03:20 AM

Thank you Marav for your reply and suggestions but the part of ansible code you mentioned works OK.
The problem is with the ansible code that inserts crontab entry (here):

Code:

- name: cron job to for script1.sh
  cron:
    name: script1
    weekday: "1"
    hour: "1"
    cron_file: "/var/spool/cron/user1"
    user: user1
    job: "/mnt/sync/script1.sh"

Result in crontab:

Code:

#Ansible: script1.sh
0 1 * * 1 user1 /mnt/sync/script1.sh

pan64 · 12-29-2020, 03:31 AM

you specified user: user1. What will happen if you remove that line?

czezz · 12-29-2020, 03:48 AM

I tried that already (see opening post):

Quote:

I tried to kick out line: user: user1 but then execution fails.

It gives error like this:

Code:

fatal: [host.local.net]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "To use cron_file=... parameter you must specify user=... as well"}

pan64 · 12-29-2020, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by czezz

I tried that already (see opening post):

Sorry, that was misleading for me. Never mind.
As I posted there are system jobs and user jobs. Now your playbook creates system jobs (with user info), but you need to create user job. Actually I think you need to omit cron_file too.

czezz · 12-29-2020, 06:20 AM

That is actually a surprise to me but this way (by removing cron_file: "/var/spool/cron/ecm_admin") it added correct entry.
Thank you!

Code:

#Ansible: script1.sh
0 1 * * 1 /mnt/sync/script1.sh

Sefyir · 12-29-2020, 09:20 AM

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/lat...on_module.html

Code:

cron_file
string
		
If specified, uses this file instead of an individual user's crontab.
If this is a relative path, it is interpreted with respect to /etc/cron.d.
If it is absolute, it will typically be /etc/crontab.
Many linux distros expect (and some require) the filename portion to consist solely of upper- and lower-case letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens.
To use the cron_file parameter you must specify the user as well.

It expects any named cron file to either to be relative to /etc/cron.d or be /etc/crontab, both of which require a user.
You can see this with their examples

Code:

- name: Modifies the users crontab and doesn't need a username
  cron:
    name: "Auto update apt"
    job: "apt-get update"
    state: present
- name: Creates a cron file as /etc/cron.d/apt-update and needs a username
  cron:
    name: Auto update apt
    user: root
    job: "apt-get update"
    cron_file: apt-update
    state: present