On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 08:21:30PM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote: > On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 12:02:34AM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > > > The point of using periodic, at least under FreeBSD, is that there is a > > 'report' that is issued at the end of the monthly periodic run letting the > > admin know the status of various things on their servers ... > > > > So, for instance, it would give them a monthly reminder that the script > > *is* running on their machine ... > > The standard output and errors of cron jobs is mailed to the owner of the > cron tab. I'm not sure what periodic can do more in this area.
It just saves you from getting multiple messages. Putting a script in /etc/periodic/monthly is exactly the same as adding that script onto/into /etc/monthly.local. In fact, FreeBSD still has /etc/monthly.local, which is run by /etc/monthly/999.local. Part of the "adding and removing scripts from directories is easier for the package management system than sed scripts" theory, I suspect. Cheers, -- Andrew