From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Aug 23  4: 5:55 1999
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Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 11:50:09 +0100
From: Cillian Sharkey <cillian@baker.ie>
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To: Mike Pritchard <mpp@FreeBSD.org>
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Subject: Re: proposed change for /etc/periodic/* scripts
References: <199908231040.FAA15241@mpp.pro-ns.net>
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> Make sure they always generate some output so that a message
> does get mailed.  On more than once occasion I noticed that one
> of my boxes keeled over or the network broke when I didn't
> get my expected daily output from that machine.

My proposal would only *cut down* on all the white space,
unnecessary lines etc. in the output, there would of course
always be a report mailed out (with network interface status, uptime
info etc..) As long as I get the reports and see no errors, i know
all the various housekeeping chores the periodic scripts do have
actually been done, if not I'll see an error msg in the report..
 
> You might want to make the df part an rc.conf (or maybe a new periodic.conf)
> knob.  I have couple of machines that basically do nothing all week long
> and the disk space should always be pretty much constant.  If I notice that
> the disk space usage changed a lot, then I should go check that machine out,
> because something went haywire.

yes perhaps an /etc/periodic.conf would be good, to control the level
of verbosity and/or set options for each script ?
 
> I've had a bad experience with this in the past.  One of our
> adminstrators didn't like wading through all of the periodic
> output and changed the scripts to do what you want.  Sometime
> down the line I figured out that he had broken something in
> the script early on and 90% of it never got executed, and since
> no output meant everything was fine....you get the point.

Yes, that's always a danger.. :P

to sum up :

for scripts that do chores, if they ran successfully
don't bother telling me. if they failed, tell me.

for status reports (df, netstat, ruptime..) tell me

for checks (passwd diff etc.) tell me IF there's something to report

- Cillian


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