Jira (PUP-2643) Puppet Cron Resource Overwrites Crontab File Under Certain Situations

[Nick Walker (JIRA)]

Title: Message Title

Nick Walker created an issue   Puppet / PUP-2643 Puppet Cron Resource Overwrites Crontab File Under Certain Situations Issue Type: Bug Assignee: Unassigned Created: 22/May/14 2:52 PM Labels: customer support Priority: Normal Reporter: Nick Walker In the case where a crontab file has invalid entries the cron resource ends up overwriting the whole file with just the resources puppet knows about and removes any manually entered crontab entries even if they were valid. On a fresh system I have the following crontab setup provided by puppet: [root@master323-centos ~]# crontab -l # HEADER: This file was autogenerated at 2014-05-02 17:31:32 +0000 by puppet. # HEADER: While it can still be managed manually, it is definitely not recommended. # HEADER: Note particularly that the comments starting with 'Puppet Name' should # HEADER: not be deleted, as doing so could cause duplicate cron jobs. # Puppet Name: pe-mcollective-metadata 0,15,30,45 * * * * /opt/puppet/sbin/refresh-mcollective-metadata # Puppet Name: pe-puppet-console-prune-task * 1 * * * /opt/puppet/bin/rake -f /opt/puppet/share/puppet-dashboard/Rakefile RAILS_ENV=production reports:prune reports:prune:failed upto=30 unit=day > /dev/null I then use crontab -e to add a new entry: [root@master323-centos ~]# crontab -e crontab: installing new crontab [root@master323-centos ~]# crontab -l # HEADER: This file was autogenerated at 2014-05-02 17:31:32 +0000 by puppet. # HEADER: While it can still be managed manually, it is definitely not recommended. # HEADER: Note particularly that the comments starting with 'Puppet Name' should # HEADER: not be deleted, as doing so could cause duplicate cron jobs. # Puppet Name: pe-mcollective-metadata 0,15,30,45 * * * * /opt/puppet/sbin/refresh-mcollective-metadata # Puppet Name: pe-puppet-console-prune-task * 1 * * * /opt/puppet/bin/rake -f /opt/puppet/share/puppet-dashboard/Rakefile RAILS_ENV=production reports:prune reports:prune:failed upto=30 unit=day > /dev/null 0,15,30,45 * * * * /opt/puppet/bin/facter -p Now I add an invalid entry by editing the file directly: [root@master323-centos ~]# vim /var/spool/cron/root [root@master323-centos ~]# crontab -l # HEADER: This file was autogenerated at 2014-05-22 21:32:18 +0000 by puppet. # HEADER: While it can still be managed manually, it is definitely not recommended. # HEADER: Note particularly that the comments starting with 'Puppet Name' should # HEADER: not be deleted, as doing so could cause duplicate cron jobs. # Puppet Name: pe-mcollective-metadata 0,15,30,45 * * * * /opt/puppet/sbin/refresh-mcollective-metadata # Puppet Name: pe-puppet-console-prune-task * 1 * * * /opt/puppet/bin/rake -f /opt/puppet/share/puppet-dashboard/Rakefile RAILS_ENV=production reports:prune reports:prune:failed upto=30 unit=day > /dev/null 0,15,30,45 * * * * /opt/puppet/bin/facter -p safdljasdflkja When I run puppet it overwrite the file and I lose the legitimate entry that I had entered with crontab -e: [root@master323-centos ~]# puppet agent -t Info: Retrieving plugin Info: Loading facts in ... ... Info: Caching catalog for master323-centos Info: Applying configuration version '1400794238' Error: Could not prefetch cron provider 'crontab': Could not parse line "safdljasdflkja" at root:7 Notice: /Stage[main]/Pe_mcollective::Server/Cron[pe-mcollective-metadata]/ensure: created Notice: /Stage[main]/Pe_console_prune/Cron[pe-puppet-console-prune-task]/ensure: created Notice: Finished catalog run in 14.11 seconds I'm not sure of the ideal behavior but I see two options that could make it better: 1. Backup the crontab file to the filebucket so atleast if it gets wiped out I can just restore to the previous version. 2. Fail completely and do not manage the crontab entries if the file is in an invalid state. Add Comment   This message was sent by Atlassian JIRA (v6.1.4#6159-sha1:44eaede) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Bugs" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-bugs+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to puppet-bugs@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-bugs. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.