How can I automate the backing up of cron jobs?

Question

In the even of a crash I realize that I may not be backing up system and user cron jobs. How can I automate the backing up of my systems cron jobs?

Answer 1

Yeah another cronjob for the automation but in terms of collecting everything together, there are a few directories you want to cater for:

/etc/cron.*
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/

Back those up, and you should have everything. You can do that with:

sudo tar cvf cron-backup.tar /etc/cron.* /var/spool/cron/crontabs

Answer 2

crontab -l > /path/to/your/backup/file

For example:

crontab -l > /var/backups/${USER}.crontab.list