#7793 NORM Future : Review replacing vixie-cron with anacron

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#7793: Review replacing vixie-cron with anacron
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   Reporter:  martin.langhoff  |       Owner:  martin.langhoff
       Type:  task             |      Status:  new            
   Priority:  normal           |   Milestone:  Future Release 
  Component:  school server    |     Version:  not specified  
 Resolution:                   |    Keywords:                 
Next_action:  never set        |    Verified:  0              
  Blockedby:                   |    Blocking:                 
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Comment(by cscott):

 I reviewed this for the XO. First thing to note is that anacron is not a
 standalone system: it expects to be run from vixie-cron (or some other
 traditional cron).  So bug should be titled, "adding anacron" not
 "replacing anacron".

 Second, anacron is only appropriate for daily, weekly, monthly, or less
 frequent jobs.  It will not do sub-day resolution.  The way it works is
 that anacron is triggered daily (around midnight) from standard cron, and
 it grunges through /etc/cron.daily /etc/cron.weekly and the like looking
 for jobs it should do "today".  Anacron is also invoked *once* from the
 initscripts to see if it needs to run its jobs now (ie, if we were powered
 off last midnight, when it otherwise would have checked).  Presumably
 anacron should also be invoked when the machine wakes from suspend, but I
 don't know if that's actually hooked up in any standard manner.

 So, yes: you should add anacron to your system, and put your jobs in
 /etc/cron.daily or whatever.  But it's not a magic bullet, and (by design)
 doesn't help at all if you need tasks done more than once a day.

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Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7793#comment:1>
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