Re: cron & anacron
On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 07:55:51PM -0500, Dan Christensen wrote:
> Peter Cordes <peter@llama.nslug.ns.ca> writes:
>
> > On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 11:25:43AM -0500, Dan Christensen wrote:
> > > neonatus@neonatus.net (Bostjan Muller) writes:
> > > On my system, the default big cron jobs are automatically ignored by
> > > cron if anacron is install. Here is part of my /etc/crontab:
> > >
> > > 25 6 * * * root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
> > > 47 6 * * 7 root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly
> > > 52 6 1 * * root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly
> > >
> > > So don't remove cron.
> >
> > My system is like that too. You're wrong, though; cron doesn't do
> > anything if anacron is installed. _nothing_, not even run anacron.
> > ...
> > Go ahead and remove cron.
>
> On my system there are a lot of files in /etc/cron.d which cron *does*
> process, even though I have anacron installed. So I think my advice
> is sound, unless Bostjan has an installation with nothing in that
> directory.
Err, yes, you're right. I should have gotten more sleep before I wrote my
last message :(. I've got an old 486 laptop that I run really stripped
down. (I'm a hacker and I know what I'm doing, so it works for me:).
I like the idea of running cron/anacron stuff whenever AC power is present,
I'll have to try that, esp. if anacron does it automatically.
On my desktop, exim and logcheck have stuff in /etc/cron.d. Everything
else drops stuff in cron.{hourly,daily,...}.
grep 'cron\.d/' /pub/debian/Contents-i386 comes up with 35 files that want
to be in /etc/cron.d in all of Woody. Shouldn't be too much work to deal
with, esp since most of them didn't look like the kind of package you would
typically have on a laptop (e.g. new servers).
> My only point was that removing cron wouldn't accomplish anything that
> Bostjan wanted, and would have the potential of removing functionality.
Removing cron would make it stop reading files every so often, which causes
disk writes unless you have the filesystem mounted with the noatime
option. (I do this on my laptop, and haven't had problems with it.)
Fortunately, cron itself is not at all CPU intensive, only the cron jobs it
runs are, so you wouldn't save a whole lot.
--
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@llama.nslug. , ns.ca)
"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE
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