Ansible Cron backup location

Is it possible to modify the backup file location when you have backup activated on cron?

  - name: cronjob Test
    cron:
      name: Test
      user: root
      minute: "*/1"
      job: "/SomeFile"
      cron_file: /etc/cron.d/Test
      backup: yes

Currently the backup is in /tmp/ and I would like it to be /etc/cron.d/Test.{timestamp}.

Solution 1:

From the documentation:

Param: backup
type: boolean
Description: If set, create a backup of the crontab before it is modified. The location of the backup is returned in the backup_file variable by this module.

From there, basically:

- name: cronjob Test
  cron:
    name: Test
    user: root
    minute: "*/1"
    job: "/SomeFile"
    cron_file: /etc/cron.d/Test
    backup: yes
  register: mkcron

- name: move backup file
  copy:
    remote_src: yes
    src: "{{ mkcron.backup_file }}"
    dest: /path/to/my/backup

- name: remove original file
  file:
    path: "{{ mkcron.backup_file }}"
    state: absent

If you really find those two task too much, your can reduce to one by using a simple mv instruction in a command task. But I really don't think the very little overhead justifies falling into bad practice here.

Note: you'll probably have to harden this code so that it does not fail trying to move a non existing file on first cron creation with condition and defaults. But I'll let you do that exercise.