Bug#697039: debian-policy: cron scripts should obey similar rules as init scripts
Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist
I have installed ikiwiki and configured it sometime ago. I removed its
package recently but did not purge it.... I got noisy cron error
messages. If the cron script was written in the way most other packages
checking the existence of the executable, this did not happen. I do not
know where were the original cause (my error?) but this let me look into
the policy :-)
Some parts of the rules described under "9.3.2 Writing the scripts"
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s-writing-init
for init scripts such as the requirement to check the existence of
executables before their execution *must* be applied also to any
automatically starting scripts provided as conffile.
Example of such conffiles of automatically starting scripts provided as
a part of a package are:
* init scripts
* cron scripts
* power control scripts
* pluggable device control scripts
* ...
Also, this rule for the automatically starting scripts should also be
applied to ones generated by the package configuration helper. Such
helper *should* generate scripts with the same care.
This prevents un-needed error log after the package removal without
purging.
In this respect, inserting a section just before 9.3 as new 9.3 "Writing
the automatic scripts" while copying most of the 9.3.2 contents except
for the parts of the start, stop, restart, and force-reload options
while mentioning "The following rules for automatically starting scripts
provided as conffile must be followed." at the top or something similar,
will be a good idea.
The old "9.3.2 Writing the scripts" and old "9.5 Cron jobs" should be
updated to point to additional requirement for such scripts.
Osamu
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (10, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 3.7-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Reply to: