Bug#391836: debian-policy: New virtual package: cron-daemon
On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 09:18:45AM +0200, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
> Raphael Hertzog wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 Oct 2009, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>>>> Do both of our proposed cron daemons support that same syntax? (Does
>>>>> anyone here use bcron to comment on that?)
>>>> bcron supports the */n syntax, but not @reboot and the other @*. See
>>>> http://manpages.debian.net/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=bcrontab&sektion=5
>>> Hm. I wonder how many packages that ship cron.d files expect the @* stuff
>>> to work. If none, then maybe we should document that packages shouldn't
>>> rely on it.
>>>
>>> Everything other than @reboot is trivial to replace. @reboot is a lot
>>> trickier, although I suspect most packages use an init script.
>>
>> As a user, I got used to rely on @reboot to start services (like an irc
>> proxy).
>>
>> And I have used it in packages (outside of Debian though) as well because
>> init scripts are a pain nowadays compared to this simple solution (need to
>> write meta-information to order the boot, etc).
>>
>> It would be nice if we could mandate its support.
>
> But OTOH @reboot has a "feature" which could confuse users:
> @reboot (on std cron) is called sometime earlier as expected in the
> init.d sequence.
> And I think the new dependency based init it could make it worse.
non-root users do not have much alternatives.
> IMO I really think that packages should use the init.d script instead of
> rely @reboot, allowing @reboot only for sysadmin: better to have a unique
> method for "init.d"-like scripts, and to use the full features of new
> booting system.
> But in this case we doesn't need @reboot in the policy.
I agree that packages should not use @reboot, and that therefore there is
little point in mentionning it in policy.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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