Re: Cron Jobs and Time Zones Has Anything Changed?

["Martin McCormick" <martin.m@suddenlink.net>]

Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> writes:
> On Jo, 03 dec 20, 07:39:14, Martin McCormick wrote:
> >
> >       So, I need to read more general information about the
> > differences between systemd and what we've been using up to
> > recently.
> 
> The Wikipedia page and/or https://systemd.io might be a good place to
> start.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Andrei

	I've had a chance to investigate this more and the first
thing I did was to go to wikipedia which told me about systemd,
the on-going argument about it VS older ways to build unix-like
systems and a time line when systemd began to take hold which was
around 2015 when I retired from work so it kind of sneaked up on me
and I didn't realize that I've been using it for 5 years, well,
at least I didn't think much about systemd having different
resources.

	I've used udev rules in making sound cards come up in the
right order and that's totally a systemd thing.

	While searching for ways to use cron with different time
zones, I found out about something called systemd timers just
mentioned in this thread and it appears they definitely will do
the job but one must magically have made the connection between this
concept and the concept that cron, the usual go to resource for
making lighting come on at a certain time, purging stale files or
backing up the system now has a new kid on the block called
systemd timers.

	One can even list all the active systemd timers

        https://www.maketecheasier.com/use-systemd-timers-as-cron-replacement/

$ systemctl list-timers

And, sure enough, I had a number of them ticking away.

	An on-going problem about self-education is that it's
easy to limit the scope so much that we miss connections.
Systemd timers doesn't even sound like a replacement for cron but
think of it as cron on steroids.

	One of the things in the wikipedia article about systemd
was a complaint by someone that it's just too complicated.  All I
can say is that maybe or not that is true but that's just life.
Start simple.  Make more and more complexity as problems with
simple show up.  One day, try to make things simple again.  Lot's
of luck with that.

	I'm not so sure that being blind makes nearly as much
difference these days as it once did, but making connections that
relate one knowledge base to another in a meaningful way will
always be a problem for us.

Martin