Re: anacron apm script

[mi <Michael.Wordehoff@gmx.de>]

Now there's a weakness, it seems.
When the system boots up anacron checks if on mains power, and if not, exits 
(no daemon started). On the other hand /etc/crontab shows that cron runs only 
if no anacron is installed. So, while on battery, no cronjobs will be 
performed.

But what now if you bootup on AC, and then plug off ?
Or maybe the power-station goes down.
I didn't look it up completely, but what I've seen is indicating that after 
booting there's no further testing performed.  
/etc/apm/event.d/anacron doesn't include the capability to kill cron 
/anacron; it only tries to start them up.
 
Larger cronjobs should not be run on battery at all.
One might 'fix' it (if it's really a bug) in the apm event.
Or taking over the /etc/init.d/anacron test conditions into the /etc/cron.*/ 
scripts.


           micha.


Dwaine Gonyier [Donnerstag, 3. April 2003 03:55]:
>| I experienced a rather nasty problem yesterday (this morning?) at 12AM
>| related to this I think. I was testing to see if Debian was smart enough
>| to auto-hibernate or suspend if the battery was critically low (it didn't
>| work originally but that is another issue).
>|
>| I happened to be testing this around midnight, when I found out the hard
>| way that the standard Debian woody installation runs some daily cleanup
>| stuff. I had the laptop unplugged on purpose to run down the battery. I
>| then noticed some heavy disk activity. Of course the heavy disk activity
>| ran the battery down quickly. Either the Bios or apmd detected this and
>| tried to suspend, but the other daily cron job was sucking so much CPU,
>| the machine wasn't able to perform the tasks to enter hibernate in time
>| before the battery just died. I could see the suspend light flashing right
>| up until the battery quit.