Promising and reporting cron jobs with CFEngine

Previously I discusses how use CFEngine as a cron replacment. I'd like to revisit that using EFL and Delta Reporting.

Recall that you can use time classes to represent cron time syntax.

Sundays at 0700 hours.

In Cron

0 7 * * 0

In Cfengine

Sunday.Hr07.Min00::

EFL has several class bundles that can make class definitions easy. Try defining your holidays in cron without using a script. With the bundle efl_class_expression it is easy.

# class    ;; expression                                      ;; promisee
is_holiday ;; (January.Day1)|(December.Day25)|Sunday|Saturday ;; Holidays with no work.
backups    ;; Hr01.(Monday|Wednesday|Friday)                  ;; Backup schedule.

Using the efl_commands bundle we can promise commands just as we would in cron.

# class     ;; command             ;; shell   ;; module ;; ifelapsed ;; promisee
!is_holiday ;; /usr/bin/db_dump.sh ;; noshell ;; no     ;; 1440      ;; Daily backup
ettin       ;; /usr/bin/fetchmail  ;; noshell ;; no     ;; 5         ;; email
backups     ;; /usr/bin/backup.sh  ;; noshell ;; no     ;; 60        ;; Backups

Using Delta Reporting we can audit the history of our jobs, reporting last status and status of the past.