Foreman » Packaging

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The foreman crontab in /etc/cron.d/foreman changed to include a timestamp to the output, e.g.

*/30 * * * *    foreman    /usr/sbin/foreman-rake ldap:refresh_usergroups | gawk '{ print strftime("[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]"), $0 }' >>/var/log/foreman/cron.log 2>&1

*/30 * * * *    foreman    /usr/sbin/foreman-rake ldap:refresh_usergroups >>/var/log/foreman/cron.log 2>&1

However, there are two problems here:

1. The percent sign % has special meaning in a crontab file and is replaced with a newline and the remainder is sent as standard input.

From crontab(5):

The "sixth" field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be run. The entire command portion of the line, up to a newline or a "%" character, will be executed by /bin/sh or by the shell specified in the SHELL variable of the cronfile. A "%" character in the command, unless escaped with a backslash (\), will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the first % will be sent to the command as standard input.

2. The redirection only applies to the second command not the pipe as a whole. This means that standard error output of the rake command now is sent to standard error and it not redirected. It ends up in a cron mail instead of cron.log.

Correct would be:

*/30 * * * *    foreman    /usr/sbin/foreman-rake ldap:refresh_usergroups 2>&1 | gawk '{ print strftime("[\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S]"), $0 }' >>/var/log/foreman/cron.log 2>&1

*/30 * * * *    foreman    /usr/sbin/foreman-rake ldap:refresh_usergroups |& gawk '{ print strftime("[\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S]"), $0 }' >>/var/log/foreman/cron.log 2>&1