Remove cron using Ansible

Question

I am trying to remove cron job from all nodes. Ansible script runs without any error but it doesn't remove the cron.

Here is my playbook

---
- hosts: all
  user: <user_name>
  tasks:
  - name: disable cron
    cron:
      name: clean
      env: yes
      state: absent
      user: root
    become: True

Here is my cron on destination host.

[root@host1]# crontab -l

#Ansible: None
*/5 * * * * /root/cleanup.sh

#Ansible: None
*/5 * * * * /root/cleanup.sh

#Ansible: clean
*/5 * * * * /root/cleanup.sh

I tried replacing name with None , Ansible: None , #Ansible: None and clean . None of them worked.

How can I remove this cron? Look like idempotency not working for cron module in ansible, because I ran put cron twice and it place cronjob twice.

Answer 1

This works for me (both adding cron entries as removing):

- name: Enforce cron entries in variable files
  hosts: all
  become: true
  become_user: wls

  tasks:
  - name: "enforce crontab entries"
    cron:
      name: "{{ item.name }}"
      minute: "{{ item.minute| default('') }}"
      hour: "{{ item.hour| default('') }}"
      job: "{{ item.job| default('') }}"
      state: "{{ state | default('present') }}"
    loop: "{{ crontabentries }}"
    when:
    - crontabentries is defined
    - crontabentries| length > 0
    - item.state|default('present')  != 'absent'

  - name: enforce absence of entries
    cron:
      name: "{{ item.name }}"
      state: absent
    loop: "{{ crontabentries }}"
    when:
    - crontabentries is defined
    - crontabentries| length > 0
    - item.state|default('present')  == 'absent'

with variable file to remove:

crontabentries:
-  name: "somecronjob"
   state: absent

or variable file to add: (state = present by default so no need to mention)

crontabentries:
-  name: "somecronjob"
   minute: "0"
   hour: "6"
   job: "find /var/log/*.log -mtime +30 -type f -delete"

Answer 2

With env defined you are asking to remove an environment variable.

- name: disable cron
  cron:
    name: clean
    state: absent
    user: root
  become: True

---

Look like idempotency not working for cron module in Ansible

It's working ok, so check your code. If you have problems, you can always ask another question on SO, but you need to include the code.

Answer 3

I tried the below works for me :

 ---
 - hosts: test
   become: true
   become_user: root
   any_errors_fatal: false
   tasks:

   - name: disable cron
     cron:
      name: "{{ item }}"
      state: absent
      user: root
      become: True
      with_items:
       - clean
       - None
       - None

I have checked it by dry run : ansible-playbook cronclean.yml --check

O/P is as :

Answer 4

If you have very complicated crontab entries so you can also delete it by shell module of ansible as shown in below example.

---
- name: Deleting contab entry
  hosts: ecx
  become: true
  tasks:
   - name: "decroning entry"
     shell:
           "crontab -l -u root |grep -v mybot  |crontab -u root -"
     register: cronout
   - debug: msg="{{cronout.stdout_lines}}" 

Explanation:- You have to just replace "mybot" string on line 8 with your unique identity of crontab entry. that's it. for " how to delete multiple crontab entries by ansible " you can use multiple strings in grep as shown below

"crontab -l -u root |grep -v 'strin1\|string2\|string3\|string4'  |crontab -u root -"