Collecting Cron Tab entries across servers/users - bash

Question

Struggling with this for a couple of days. Trying to create a space delimited list of $host $useraccount $crontab entries.
I've tried a couple of different ways. Each ending in a different level of disaster, The closest I've come is this, someone point out the obvious thing I'm missing.
#!/usr/bin/bash
#Global Crontab Inventory for Scripts
#
outputfile="/localpath/cronoutput.txt"
LPARLIST=/pathto/LPAR.txt
while read LPAR;
do
ping -c 1 $LPAR > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
for user in $(ssh -n $LPAR /opt/freeware/bin/ls /var/spool/cron/crontabs);
do
while read line;
do
echo "$LPAR $user $line"
done <"$(ssh -n "$LPAR" /opt/freeware/bin/tail -n +29 /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$user)"
done
fi
done <$LPARLIST
It seems to be complaining about trying to execute the output of the tail as a command.
./crons.sh: line 11: (Several pages of cropped cron entries): File name too long
./crons.sh: line 11: : No such file or directory
./crons.sh: line 11: #

Answer 1

This is working for me.
#!/bin/bash
#Global Crontab Inventory for Scripts
#
outputfile="/localpath/cronoutput.txt"
LPARLIST=LPAR.txt
cat $LPARLIST |
while read LPAR;
do
ping -c 1 $LPAR > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
for user in $(ssh -n root#$LPAR ls /var/spool/cron/crontabs);
do
ssh -n "root#$LPAR" tail -n +29 /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$user |
while read line;
do
echo "$LPAR $user $line"
done
done
fi
done
I prefer cat xxx | while ... instead of redirecting input as you did. In theory it should be the same. I did not spot anything specifically wrong and I did not really change anything -- just rearranged what you had.
The advantage of the cat xxx | while ... technique is you can insert commands between the cat and the while. In this case, I would not do the tail -n +29 because you are guessing the first 29 lines are junk but that might not be true. Rather I would just do a cat of the file and then egrep out the lines that start with a hash #. Again, .... yes, the cat is redundant but who really cares. It is more general and easier to add and delete things.
I don't have the /opt packages installed and I would not depend upon them unless absolutely necessary. You are increasing dependencies. So I just used the local "ls" and "tail". I also added an explicit root# but you don't need that. It just simplified my testing.
Perhaps the ls is overflowing. Try this one:
#!/bin/bash
#Global Crontab Inventory for Scripts
#
outputfile="/localpath/cronoutput.txt"
LPARLIST=LPAR.txt
cat $LPARLIST |
while read LPAR;
do
ping -c 1 $LPAR > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
ssh -n root#$LPAR ls /var/spool/cron/crontabs |
while read user
do
ssh -n "root#$LPAR" tail -n +29 /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$user |
while read line;
do
echo "$LPAR $user $line"
done
done
fi
done
Hope this helps...