Ruby Dump all cron jobs to text file - ruby

Question

I want a ruby script that will dump all the existing cron jobs to a text file using "crontab -l" or anything else that will achieve the same objective. Also the text file should be possible to use with crontab txtfile to create the cron jobs again.
Below is the code I already wrote:
def dump_pre_cron_jobs(file_path)
begin
cron_list = %x[crontab -l]
if(cron_list.size > 0)
cron_list.each do |crl|
mymethod_that_writes_tofile(file_path, crl) unless crl.chomp.include?("myfilter")
end
end
rescue Exception => e
raise(e.message)
end
end

Answer 1

Why does this need to be a Ruby script?
As you say, you can dump the crontab to a file with crontab -l > crontab.txt.
To read them back in again, simply use crontab crontab.txt, or cat crontab.txt | crontab -

Answer 2

I agree with #Vortura that you do not need to create a Ruby script to do this.
If you really want to, here is a probable way:
File.open('crontab.txt', 'w') do |crontab|
crontab << `crontab -l`
end

Answer 3

NOTE: Running this as root, or using sudo should capture all the cron jobs on a system, not just a single users' jobs. Run it as yourself or as that user and it might capture just those jobs. I haven't test that aspect of it.
Trying to run crontab -l to capture crontab files for all the users and packages seems the indirect way to do the task and could have the hassle of dealing with password requests hanging your code. I'd write code to comb through the directories that store them, rather than mess with prompts. Run the code using sudo and you shouldn't have any problems accessing the files.
Take a look at the discussion at: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/etc-crontab-vs-etc-cron-d-vs-var-spool-cron-crontabs-853881/ for information on where the actual cron tab files are stored on disk.
Also https://superuser.com/questions/389116/how-to-recover-crontab-jobs-from-filesystem/389137 has similar information.
Mac OS varies a little from Linux in where Apple puts the cron files. Run man cron at the command-line for the definitive details on either OS.
Here's slightly-tested code for how I'd back up the files. How you restore them is for you to figure out, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out:
require 'fileutils'
BACKUP_PATH = '/path/to/some/safe/storage/directory'
CRONTAB_DIRS = %w[
/usr/lib/cron/tabs
/var/spool/cron
/etc/anacrontab
/etc/cron.d
]
CRONTAB_FILES = %w[
/etc/cron_list
]
def dump_pre_cron_jobs(file_path)
full_backup_path = File.join(
BACKUP_PATH,
File.dirname(file_path)
)
FileUtils.mkdir_p(full_backup_path) unless Dir.exist?(full_backup_path)
File.write(
File.join(
full_backup_path,
file_path
),
File.read(file_path)
)
rescue Exception => e
STDERR.puts e.message
end
CRONTAB_DIRS.each do |ct|
next unless Dir.exist?(ct)
begin
Dir.entries(File.join(ct, '*')).each { |fn| dump_pre_cron_jobs(fn) }
rescue Errno::EACCES => e
STDERR.puts e.message
end
end
CRONTAB_FILES.each do |fn|
dump_pre_cron_jobs(fn)
end
You'll need to run this as root via sudo to access the directories and files as they're usually locked down from unauthorized prying eyes.
The code creates a repository of crontabs, in BACKUP_PATH, based on their original file paths. No changes are made to the file contents so they can be restored as-is by copying them back via cp or writing code to reverse this process.