Re: [gentoo-user] Hows this for rsnapshot cron jobs?

[Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org>]

On 2013-04-21 4:32 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/04/2013 20:47, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> 30 20 1 * *     root    rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot/myhost1.conf monthly
>>> 20 20 1 * *     root    rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot/myhost1.conf yearly

> Only the last line is wrong - your monthly and yearly are equivalent.To
> be properly yearly, you need a month value in field 4.

Oh, right (I added that interval myself, rsnapshot only comes with the 
hourly, daily weekly and monthly by default).

So, if I wanted it to run at 8:20pm on Dec 31, it would be:

20 22 31 12 *  root    rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot/myhost1.conf yearly

> I'm not familiar with rsnapshot, I assume that package can deal with how
> many of each type of snapshot to retain in it's conf file? I see no
> crons to delete out of date snapshots.

Correct, rsnapshot handles this.

> And, more as a nitpick than anything else, I always recommend that when
> a sysadmin adds a root cronjob, use crontab -e so it goes in
> /var/spool/cron, not /etc/crontab. Two benefits:
>
> - syntax checking when you save and quit
> - if you let portage, package managers, chef, puppet or whatever manage
> your global cronjobs in /etc/portage, then there's no danger that system
> will trash the stuff that you added there manually.

I prefer doing things manually... so, nothing else manages my cron jobs.

That said, I prefer to do this 'the gentoo way'... so is crontab -e the 
gentoo way?

;)