Ansible Playbook to create a cronjob and run every 2 hours

Question

I need to write an Ansible Playbook that configures a linux machine to routinely prune files in /etc/dummy/ older than 1 hour in a configurable interval as a configurable user

So, this is what I tried. But I am having some difficulties. So before actually running this in production, I need to verify if the interval is correct. i.e that the script will run every 2 hours. And I need to make sure the cronjob will be created and will be persisted even after a system reboot.

---
- hosts: servers
  vars:
    olderthan: 1
    intervals: 120 # needs to run every 2 hours, everyday
    user: tdp
    scriptpath: /etc/tmp/pruner.sh

  tasks:

    - name: Copy the file
      copy:
        src: "{{ scriptpath }}"
        dest: "{{ scriptpath }}"

   - name: "The Dummy Pruner"
     cron:
      name: "Prune the items at /etc/dummy"
      user: "{{ user }}"
      minute: "{{ intervals }}"
      hour: "*"
      day: "*"
      weekday: "*"
      month: "*"
      job: "sh {{ scriptpath }} >> {{ scriptpath }}/results.log 2>&1"
      state: present

and my /etc/tmp/pruner.sh looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

find /etc/dummy -name '*.*' -mmin +60 -delete > /dev/null

Can someone help me figure out the above issues?

Answer 1

According the documentation cron - Manage cron.d and crontab entries the Parameter for minute needs to be 0-59. You may have a look into the there given Examples.

Instead of describing the interval with 120 minutes for minute you need to describe it with every 2 hour */2 for hour.

Further Q&A

• How to schedule cron jobs in Linux?
• How do cron steps work?
• How do I set up a cron job?

... and many more

Answer 2

Workaround can be putting complete line into the crontab by using module lineinfile or blockinfile if you need to put much more rather than one line.