make-crontab

make-crontab is used for the crontab management on servers with several web applications, where each application can edit their own cronjob information. The key feature of this system is the need of only one system user (usually the apache user) to do this job.

The applications can not only edit their own cronjob informationen but also add new cronjobs without mixing up the croninfo with the other apps.

In the directory make-crontab a makefile and some content files containing the cronjob informationen of each application are located. These content files are named according to the name pattern 'crontab-app1', 'crontab-app2'.

The content files can be written by the applications directly.

If the makefile is called, it merges all files of the pattern crontab-* to one crontab file, which will then be installed as the crontab for the apache user. The makefile check for updates on the content files and installs the crontab only if required.

In order to keep this process running, the makefile must be called regularly. For this purpose an additional crontab entry starts the make crontab procedure one time per minute.

Please note: 'GNU make' must be installed in order to run the makefile.