Re: Getting Config::Crontab to Write File to Crontab Command

[waswas-fng]

Config::Crontab's POD does have a long example for how to read/write users crontabs in it...

$c = new Config::Crontab;
$c->owner('joe');
$c->read;  ## reading joe's crontab
$c->write;  ##write out to joe's crontab...
$c->owner('bob'); #change user to bob
$c->write;  #write same crontab to bob's crontab

Update:

It does look as though Config::Crontab handles restarting crontab and setting other user's crontabs via the system crontab command -- but looking though the code a few things you need to be aware of:

1: As you can see below the crontab command is not absolute -- you should make sure your PATH is set correctly before calling this write function -- or better yet modify Config::Crontab to use a setting to define where crontab exists on the filesystem (and maybe submit a patch).

my $crontab;
    if( my $owner = $self->owner ) {
        $crontab = `crontab -u $owner $tmpfile 2>&1`;
    }
    else {
        $crontab = `crontab $tmpfile 2>&1`;
    }
    chomp $crontab;
    unlink $tmpfile;

    if( $crontab || $? ) {
        $self->error($crontab);
        if( $self->strict ) {
        carp "Error writing crontab (crontab exited with status " . 
          ($? >> 8) . "): " . $self->error;
        }
        return;
    }
    }

    return 1;
}

2: The Module does not check if you are root before trying to update any users crontab -- if you are modding users crontabs other than your running UID, you should run as root and also verify the script is running as root before you call the writes.