On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Steve Greenland wrote: > Here's the proposal: > > In addition to reading /etc/crontab, the cron daemon will also > read each file in /etc/cron.d (chosen for similarity to init.d). Each > of the files in cron.d is considered a crontab "fragment", and should > be formatted exactly as /etc/crontab (i.e. with the username specified). > The end result will be just as if cron read the result of > > cat /etc/crontab /etc/cron.d/*
Isn't it easier to have all packages that place something in /etc/cron.d (or whatever is's called) call an update-cron script which conctenates all files in /etc/cron.d/ into /etc/crontab? The /etc/crontab we have currently would also have to me moved into /etc/cron.d/ . Perhaps /etc/crontab could also contain some comment lines that say something like "don't edit this file, instead edit the appropriate file in /etc/cron.d/". The update-cron script could be very simple, like: #!/bin/sh cat <<EOF > /etc/crontab.tmp # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE. It will be overwritten by the update-cron script. # Instead, edit the appropriate file in /etc/cron.d and re-run update-cron . # EOF cat /etc/cron.d/* >> /etc/crontab.tmp mv /etc/crontab.tmp /etc/crontab Advantage: cron doesn't need to be modified > Packages requiring faster than daily intervals, or irregular > intervals, should place the appropriate crontab fragment in > /etc/cron.d/packagename. This file should be marked as conf file, so > that the sysadmin may change it. The files in /etc/cron.d will be > checked for changes (via stat()) every minute, just as /etc/crontab is; > therefore there is no need for action in the postinst. Disadvantage (perhaps) of my proposal: each package has to call update-crom in both postinst and postrm. I think there should be no modifications to cron that make Debian incompatible with other unixes, if they can be avoided. Remco -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .