As we’ve seen before, Synology’s NAS offer a Linux distribution that can be enhanced with many applications. As all Linux distributions (at least as far as I can tell), it comes with cron which allows to easily schedule tasks that need to be run on a regular basis.
We’ve shown previously how to add a task to cron but I have noticed that some of the tasks that I set up were disappearing on reboot. The crontab file was simply containing the default entries and I had to add again my custom tasks after each reboot. As this doesn’t really happen so often, it is easy to forget about it meaning that if those tasks are supposed to run backups for instance, then you might end up in situation were your backups do not run for a while.
It is well know that Synology cron management is a bit unsual compared to traditional Linux distributions. By default, crontab is only editable by root (/etc/crontab
) and this needs to be done through a text editor rather than the usual crontab
command. But there are a few other limitations that one can read here and there:
- the
who
field can only be filled withroot
, otherwise the entry is removed after a reboot - the different fields need to be separated by a tab (no spaces), otherwise the entry is removed after a reboot
Luckily, John Kelly has recently uploaded a script on Synology forum, allowing to run crontab
and validating the resulting file once updated. Start by creating a file:
1
nano /sbin/crontab
And paste the script content in it. Since I am more comfortable with nano, I simply replaced the default editor in the code below.
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#!/bin/sh
#
# Provides missing crontab editing
# Note: Synology crond requires arguments separated by a TAB character
# and the crontab user field only supports root. These requirements are
# enforced by this script.
#
# John Kelly, 2013-05-03
#
SCRIPTNAME=`basename $0`
# Failed edits are kept in this file
CHKCRON=/etc/crontab.chk
# Previous version
TMPNAME=/etc/crontab.old
# Max versions to keep. One or greater
MAXVER=3
# Set to your editor of choice
EDITOR=nano
usage () {
echo -e "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME [-l | -f | -e | -h]\n"
}
# Basic sanity checks. Running as root. One Parameter only.
[[ "`id -u`" = "0" ]] || ( echo "Root only"; exit 1 )
[[ $# -ne 1 ]] && ( usage; exit 1 )
# Check for selected editor. Default to vi
EDITOR=`/usr/bin/which $EDITOR`
[[ ! -x "$EDITOR" ]] && EDITOR=/bin/vi
show_help () {
echo -e "Provides basic access to the crontab file"
echo -e "with simple format checks.\n"
usage
echo " -l : Lists the current contents of the root crontab file."
echo " -f : Refreshes the cron daemon."
echo " -e : Edits the crontab file and refreshes the cron daemon if"
echo " the file is actually changed. Otherwise does nothing."
echo -e " -h : Shows this help text.\n"
exit 0
}
check_new () {
# Synocron is very picky. Check the file format
( # Start of output redirection block
IFS="
"
cat /etc/crontab | \
while read LINE; do
# Find out if empty or the first character is a #
echo "${LINE}" | awk '{print $1}' | egrep "^#|^$" >/dev/null 2>&1
if [[ $? = 0 ]]; then
# Copy over comment/blank lines exactly
echo "$LINE"
else
unset IFS
# test convert using tabs to compare results
echo "$LINE" | while read MIN HO MD MO WD WH COM; do
echo -e "$MIN\t$HO\t$MD\t$MO\t$WD\troot\t$COM"
done
IFS="
"
fi
done
) > $CHKCRON # end of output redirection block
# Compare files and return the result
diff /etc/crontab $CHKCRON >/dev/null 2>&1
return $?
}
restart_cron () {
echo "Refreshing cron daemon."
/usr/syno/sbin/synoservice --restart crond
}
archive () { # Keep up to MAXVER versions
ARCVER=$MAXVER
while [[ $ARCVER -gt 1 ]]; do
PRVVER=`expr $ARCVER - 1`
mv -f $TMPNAME.$PRVVER $TMPNAME.$ARCVER
ARCVER=$PRVVER
done
cp $TMPNAME ${TMPNAME}.1
}
edit_cron () {
archive
cp /etc/crontab ${TMPNAME}
$EDITOR /etc/crontab
diff /etc/crontab ${TMPNAME} >/dev/null 2>&1
if [[ $? = 0 ]]; then
echo "No changes made. Doing nothing."
else
if check_new; then
echo "Crontab altered."
echo "Previous version saved in ${TMPNAME}"
rm -f $CHKCRON
restart_cron
else
echo "Crontab file is NOT in the correct Synology format."
echo "Please use TABs between fields and specify root in sixth field."
echo "Your version is saved in $CHKCRON. Restoring original version."
cat /etc/crontab > $CHKCRON
cat $TMPNAME > /etc/crontab
fi
fi
exit 0
}
### Script flow ###################
while getopts lfhe flag; do
case $flag in
l) cat /etc/crontab; exit 0;;
e) edit_cron;;
f) restart_cron;;
h) show_help;;
?) usage;;
esac
done
## End of script flow #############
Save and close the file (ctrl + O
, ctrl + X
) and update the permissions (chmod 755 /sbin/crontab
). From now on, you will be able to run the usual crontab commands:
crontab -l
: list the crontab contentcrontab -e
: edit the crontab content and restart cron daemon if content is validcrontab -f
: restart cron daemoncrontab -h
: show help
Big thanks to John Kelly for putting this together. This is a great help!
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