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

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"
         }
     }
 }

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"
     ]
 }

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 (joshua@opscode.com)

Provider and Defining Jobs:: David Marble (davidmarble@gmail.com)

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