Followup-For: Bug #256588
Package: anacron
Dear Maintainer,
It looked like my machine hadn't run anacron for many months,
and for some undetermined reason, it wasn't reported.
After some checks, I found in syslog :
anacron: Error opening /etc/anacrontab: no such file or directory
When I checked, the message was accurate.
My first attempt was to ask apt-get to reinstall, in fact, I tried
that before I found the cause in syslog. But the reinstall didn't
paste a copy of anacrontab into /etc. I see that as a bug, which
is why I'm filing this.
I don't know why anacrontab got deleted. I had several attempts
at recovering this machine from a bungled shutdown and restart,
so many reasons are possible.
While verifying cause and effect for this, I find that systemctl
is now recognising the problem,
systemctl --state=failed
UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
● anacron.service loaded failed failed Run anacron jobs
... more messages
I think that on a reinstall of anacron, it should at least check
whether /etc/anacrontab is there on the system, and report an
error, or warning, if not.
I've just noticed that a bunch of other anacron-related files
are missing (see below) and I will hold off on fixing those
until after I do some backups.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.1
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
Versions of packages anacron depends on:
pn debianutils <none>
pn init-system-helpers <none>
pn libc6 <none>
pn lsb-base <none>
Versions of packages anacron recommends:
pn cron | cron-daemon <none>
pn rsyslog | system-log-daemon <none>
Versions of packages anacron suggests:
pn default-mta | mail-transport-agent <none>
pn powermgmt-base <none>
-- Configuration Files:
/etc/anacrontab [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/anacrontab'
/etc/apm/event.d/anacron [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'/etc/apm/event.d/anacron'
/etc/cron.daily/0anacron [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'/etc/cron.daily/0anacron'
/etc/cron.monthly/0anacron [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'/etc/cron.monthly/0anacron'
/etc/cron.weekly/0anacron [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'/etc/cron.weekly/0anacron'
/etc/default/anacron [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/default/anacron'
/etc/init.d/anacron [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/init.d/anacron'
/etc/init/anacron.conf [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
'/etc/init/anacron.conf'
-- no debconf information
