I added a couple of lines in my crontab to automatically backup some of my files using rsnapshot. It works pretty well and when I reboot I can see that my modified crontab is automatically loaded. I noticed that sometimes the crontab reverts to the default one (and without rebooting the machine). I think it has to do with stopping or starting the array or modifying user share settings. This is really annoying because after few weeks I discover that no backup has been performed. What script resets the crontab when array is stopped or started? Should I put my crontab tweak at a better location rather than /boot/config/go?

 

/boot/config/go

...
# Install/configure rsnapshot
/boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot-setup.sh

 

/boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot-setup.sh

#!/bin/sh
installpkg /boot/packages/rsnapshot-1.3.1-i486-1af.tgz
cp /boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot.conf /etc/
crontab -l >/tmp/crontab
echo "# start rsnapshot periodicaly" >>/tmp/crontab
echo "15 05 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily" >>/tmp/crontab
echo "10 02 * * 01 /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly" >>/tmp/crontab
echo "05 00 01 * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly" >>/tmp/crontab
crontab /tmp/crontab

I added a couple of lines in my crontab to automatically backup some of my files using rsnapshot. It works pretty well and when I reboot I can see that my modified crontab is automatically loaded. I noticed that sometimes the crontab reverts to the default one (and without rebooting the machine). I think it has to do with stopping or starting the array or modifying user share settings. This is really annoying because after few weeks I discover that no backup has been performed. What script resets the crontab when array is stopped or started? Should I put my crontab tweak at a better location rather than /boot/config/go?

 

/boot/config/go

...
# Install/configure rsnapshot
/boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot-setup.sh

 

/boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot-setup.sh

#!/bin/sh
installpkg /boot/packages/rsnapshot-1.3.1-i486-1af.tgz
cp /boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot.conf /etc/
crontab -l >/tmp/crontab
echo "# start rsnapshot periodicaly" >>/tmp/crontab
echo "15 05 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily" >>/tmp/crontab
echo "10 02 * * 01 /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly" >>/tmp/crontab
echo "05 00 01 * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly" >>/tmp/crontab
crontab /tmp/crontab

the unRAID web-interface uses its own copy of the "cron" file. It does not extract one from the crontab command each time it makes a change.

 

It is easy though to fix. All you need is to add one more line to your rsnapshot-setup.sh script. 

That line is shown below.  (The last character on the line is a "-" )

 

#!/bin/sh

installpkg /boot/packages/rsnapshot-1.3.1-i486-1af.tgz

cp /boot/config/myconfig/rsnapshot.conf /etc/

crontab -l >/tmp/crontab

echo "# start rsnapshot periodicaly" >>/tmp/crontab

echo "15 05 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily" >>/tmp/crontab

echo "10 02 * * 01 /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly" >>/tmp/crontab

echo "05 00 01 * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly" >>/tmp/crontab

crontab /tmp/crontab

cp /tmp/crontab /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root-

 

When unRAID next makes a change to cron, it starts with the copy in "/var/spool/cron/crontabs/root-" rather than use the crontab command to get the starting point.

 

Edit: On unRAID 5.X releases, unRAID no longer uses root-, and following the above suggestion will result in warnings in the syslog of a non-existant user root-.  In other words, do not follow the hint in this post. 

 

Joe L.

 

Thanks for the quick answer. This is great information.

Thanks Joe... just want I need too.