community.general.cronvar module – Manage variables in crontabs

Note

This module is part of the community.general collection (version 5.8.3).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.general. You need further requirements to be able to use this module, see Requirements for details.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.general.cronvar.

Synopsis

  • Use this module to manage crontab variables.

  • This module allows you to create, update, or delete cron variable definitions.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

  • cron

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

backup

boolean

If set, create a backup of the crontab before it is modified. The location of the backup is returned in the backup variable by this module.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

cron_file

string

If specified, uses this file instead of an individual user’s crontab.

Without a leading /, this is assumed to be in /etc/cron.d.

With a leading /, this is taken as absolute.

insertafter

string

If specified, the variable will be inserted after the variable specified.

Used with state=present.

insertbefore

string

Used with state=present. If specified, the variable will be inserted just before the variable specified.

name

string / required

Name of the crontab variable.

state

string

Whether to ensure that the variable is present or absent.

Choices:

  • "absent"

  • "present" ← (default)

user

string

The specific user whose crontab should be modified.

This parameter defaults to root when unset.

value

string

The value to set this variable to.

Required if state=present.

Examples

- name: Ensure entry like "[email protected]" exists
  community.general.cronvar:
    name: EMAIL
    value: [email protected]

- name: Ensure a variable does not exist. This may remove any variable named "LEGACY"
  community.general.cronvar:
    name: LEGACY
    state: absent

- name: Add a variable to a file under /etc/cron.d
  community.general.cronvar:
    name: LOGFILE
    value: /var/log/yum-autoupdate.log
    user: root
    cron_file: ansible_yum-autoupdate

Authors

  • Doug Luce (@dougluce)