Re: do packages depend on lexical order or {daily,weekly,monthly} cron jobs?

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Marc Haber writes ("Re: do packages depend on lexical order or {daily,weekly,monthly} cron jobs?"):
> On Sat, 27 Jul 2019 19:02:16 +0100, Ian Jackson
> >I worry about additional concurrency.  Unlike ordering bugs,
> >concurrency bugs are hard to find by testing.  So running these
> >scripts in parallel is risky.
> >
> >And, I think running cron.fooly scripts in parallel is a bad idea.
> >The objective is to run them "at some point", not to get it done as
> >soon as possible.  Running them in sequence will save electricity,
> >may save wear on components, and will reduce overall impact on other
> >uses of the same system.
> 
> I fully agree with that. However, moving away from "in sequence" thing
> would greatly ease the migration to systemd timers, making it easier
> to get away without crond on many systems.

Why can't systemd run cron.fooly as one big timer job rather than one
timer job for each script ?

That leaves cron.fooly running in parallel with cron.barly but that is
something these jobs have to cope with anyway ?

> I am wondering whether this is something we should think about giving
> up in future. We have given up so many things since we moved to
> systemd, would it be worth throwing this out of the window as well?

Obviously, I don't think it is a good idea to break this for
non-systemd users because of difficulties making it work properly
with systemd.  Perhaps I have misunderstood you ?

Thanks,
Ian.

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