Bug#1018840: Please consider update-smart-drivedb cron job

[Trent W. Buck]

Package: smartmontools
Version: 7.2-1
Severity: wishlist

Is it reasonable to include a cron job to run update-smart-drivedb regularly?

It can be off-by-default, e.g.
just put it into debian/smartmontools.examples.

Here is the one I've been running on Debian 11 since 2021:

    update-smart-drivedb.service:

        [Unit]
        Description=Update SMART drive database
        ConditionPathExists=/usr/sbin/update-smart-drivedb

        [Service]
        Type=oneshot
        ExecStart=update-smart-drivedb

        [Unit]
        Wants=network-online.target
        After=network-online.target

        Before=smartmontools.service
        [Install]
        WantedBy=smartmontools.service

    update-smart-drivedb.timer:

        [Unit]
        ConditionPathExists=/usr/sbin/update-smart-drivedb

        [Timer]
        OnCalendar=daily
        RandomizedDelaySec=24h
        Persistent=true

        [Install]
        WantedBy=timers.target

If these were shipped in examples,
the end user (sysadmin) could enable it like this:

    systemctl link \
      /usr/share/doc/smartmontools/examples/update-smart-drivedb.timer \
      /usr/share/doc/smartmontools/examples/update-smart-drivedb.service
    systemctl preset --all

Probably OnCalendar=daily is a bit excessive; it could be weekly.