taskrunner-sh

Centralized logging of cron and backup tasks without the need of host-based smtp transport/sendmail

Features

• captures the command output and send it via http post to a custom REST endpoint to aggregate data (e.g. cron, backups)
• extract + send logs from last run of a systemd service via journalctl InvocationID

Usage

Command wrapper

# print "1234" to stdout via "echo" - identified as "my-task-name"
taskrunner "my-task-name" echo "1234"

systemd service status

# extract logs from last run of myservice - identified as "my-task-name"
taskrunner-systemd "my-task-name" myservice.service

Invocation via service file

Triggered after restic-scheduler has been executed

[Unit]
Description=restic logger
After=restic-scheduler@%i.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=taskrunner-systemd "restic backup of %i" restic-scheduler@%i.service

[Install]
WantedBy=restic-scheduler@%i.service

Legacy cron examples

the output/logs of rsnapshot will be aggregated

# backup daily - 6:50
50 06 * * * /bin/taskrunner "rsnapshot daily" /sbin/rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot.conf daily

# backup weekly (monday) - 6:30
30 06 * * 1 /bin/taskrunner "rsnapshot weekly" /sbin/rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot.conf weekly

# backup monthly (5th) - 6:10
10 06 5 * 0 /bin/taskrunner "rsnapshot monthly" /sbin/rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot.conf monthly

Configuration

Each host require its own api key set via /etc/taskrunner.conf. This file also contains the API endpoint url.

File: /etc/taskrunner.conf

# logging endpoint url
API_URL="https://tasks.example.org/log"

# api key/token to identify the source
API_KEY="xVibkYrOAYKQFrFbhsqJ"

HTTP Post Params

The following variables are send via POST request:

• title - the task-name passed as first argument
• status - the return/exit code of the command passed as second argument
• content - stdout/stderr of the executed command
• t0 - execution start time of the process - unix timestamp/ISO_8601/systemd-timestamp
• t1 - execution stop time of the process - unix timestamp/ISO_8601/systemd-timestamp

Authentication

The APIKEY (token/bearer authentication) is send via the http header field X-APIKEY as plaintext.

TLS/SSL transport encryption is strongly recommended

Contribution

The .deb package is automatically generated via a Continuous Delivery Pipeline - please do not build packages manually!

License

taskrunner-sh is OpenSource and licensed under the Terms of Mozilla Public License 2.0. You're welcome to contribute