Step to rebuild crontab file of zimbra user

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Problem

Default crontab of zimbra user removed accidentally.

OR

System admin removed some entries from the crontab file.

Solution

Steps to restore or rebuilt crontab entries for the zimbra user on different ZCS environments.

(A) Steps for single-server setup :

First we have to take backup of current crontab file, then we will use following command to re-built crontab for zimbra user.

# cp -pvr /var/spool/cron/zimbra  /tmp/zimbra.cron.BAK  
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab > /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.ldap >> /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.store >> /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.logger >> /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.mta >> /tmp/cron.zimbra
# echo "# ZIMBRAEND -- DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BETWEEN THIS LINE AND ZIMBRASTART" >> /tmp/cron.zimbra 
# crontab -u zimbra /tmp/cron.zimbra   
# su - zimbra -c "zmschedulebackup -D" 
# /etc/init.d/crond restart   

(B) Steps for multi-server setup :

Here we have mentioned the commands according to the role of ZCS server.

LDAP Server :

# cp -pvr /var/spool/cron/zimbra  /tmp/zimbra.cron.BAK 
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab > /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.ldap >> /tmp/cron.zimbra  
# echo "# ZIMBRAEND -- DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BETWEEN THIS LINE AND ZIMBRASTART" >> /tmp/cron.zimbra  
# crontab -u zimbra /tmp/cron.zimbra   
# su - zimbra -c "zmschedulebackup -D" 
# /etc/init.d/crond restart

Mailbox Server :

# cp -pvr /var/spool/cron/zimbra  /tmp/zimbra.cron.BAK 
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab > /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.store >> /tmp/cron.zimbra
# echo "# ZIMBRAEND -- DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BETWEEN THIS LINE AND ZIMBRASTART" >> /tmp/cron.zimbra  
# crontab -u zimbra /tmp/cron.zimbra   
# su - zimbra -c "zmschedulebackup -D" 
# /etc/init.d/crond restart

MTA+Proxy Server :

# cp -pvr /var/spool/cron/zimbra  /tmp/zimbra.cron.BAK  
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab > /tmp/cron.zimbra
# cat /opt/zimbra/zimbramon/crontabs/crontab.mta >> /tmp/cron.zimbra
# echo "# ZIMBRAEND -- DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BETWEEN THIS LINE AND ZIMBRASTART" >> /tmp/cron.zimbra 
# crontab -u zimbra /tmp/cron.zimbra   
# /etc/init.d/crond restart

Note :

We have to restart Cron service after installing new crontab file.

Here is the commands to restart Cron service on different OS versions.

Ubuntu 12.04/14.04

service cron restart

RHEL/CentOS 7.x

systemctl restart crond
systemctl status crond

RHEL/CentOS 6.x

service crond restart

Heera Singh

<hsingh@zimbra.com>