Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Inotify and (f)crontabs

["Ryan Reich" <ryan.reich@gmail.com>]

On 7/1/07, Daniel Schömer <daniel.schoemer@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Ryan Reich wrote:
> > [...]
> > My issue: I just installed fcron and I have to say, I'm
> > a little disappointed with the kludgy mechanism for
> > implmenting:
> >
> > 1. easy configuration, meaning I don't have to run fcrontab
> >    personally
> >
> > 2. /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly} These are implmented
> >    by some very silly-looking polling tricks which, even in
> >    principle, will necessarily waste 83% (that's 5/6) of their
> >    efforts and clutter the logs with useless and uninformative
> >    messages.
> > [...]
>
> I just want to share my system-wide fcrontab:
>
>   $ sudo fcrontab -l systab
>   PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
>
>   !nice(15)
>   !noticenotrun(false)
>   !serial(true)
>
>   %hourly  0-30  run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
>   %daily   * *   run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
>   %weekly  * *   run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly
>   %monthly * * * run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly
>
> I use fcron's capabilities to execute the files in
> /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}/ once within each period.

Thanks for sharing this.  I'd never seen this run-parts utility
before, though I see at least that it's a Debian contribution rather
than a standard utility (thus I avert shame).  This is a more elegant
solution than the run-crons method, though it doesn't have quite the
same effect as instructing cron to actually run each command
separately (their outputs will be mailed in conglomerate, rather than
one mail per periodic program.  This is, according to your
preferences, either a bug or a feature.  Less ambiguously a bug,
though, is that the syslog will only record running run-parts and not
which parts were run).

Have you any thoughts on what to do with check_system_crontabs?  Its
schedule is inherently reactive and not periodic, so really,
administering it with (f)cron at all is a logical error.  That's why I
suggested inotify in the first place.

-- 
Ryan Reich
--
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