Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2020 05:50:35 -0800 From: Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@cschubert.com> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>, "N.J. Mann" <njm@njm.me.uk> Subject: Re: updating cron and atrun Message-ID: <202002091350.019DoZrf084564@slippy.cwsent.com> In-Reply-To: <55C50689-6DA8-4D44-92BB-72C38B54AC96@cschubert.com> References: <CAJzSF_7N4A-_6LfjivWRirNkTHv3ANWu%2BBX6g1UOKqdYmDZZNA@mail.gmail.com> <6701.1581190231@critter.freebsd.dk> <97A66670F59C9C626B5090E3@triton.njm.me.uk> <8967.1581243035@critter.freebsd.dk> <55C50689-6DA8-4D44-92BB-72C38B54AC96@cschubert.com>
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In message <55C50689-6DA8-4D44-92BB-72C38B54AC96@cschubert.com>, Cy Schubert wr ites: > On February 9, 2020 2:10:35 AM PST, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> wr > ote: > >-------- > >In message <97A66670F59C9C626B5090E3@triton.njm.me.uk>, "N.J. Mann" > >writes: > >>Hi, > >> > >>On Saturday, February 08, 2020 19:30:31 +0000 Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > >>> > >>> Thanks for looking into this. > >>> > >>> Is at(1) something people actually use these days, or should it be > >>> disabled by default ? > >> > >>I do. I use it to run various homebrew scripts in response to > >external > >>events. I needed a delay (sometime minutes, sometimes hours) between > >>the event and the response and at(1) was a perfect fit. > > > >Right, it is absolutely useful to have, if you need it, and it should > >not be removed. > > > >But if, as I suspect, the vast majority of FreeBSD pointlessly add > >288 lines to /var/log/cron every day, without anybody ever using the > >at(1) > >command, maybe we should disable it to save power and disk-wear ? > > I use at at(1) and batch(1) all the time, on FreeBSD and other platforms. Mos > t people I know, professionally, don't know about these commands. They add th > e 288 lines to cron every day. They're not interested when I explain to them > a better way to do it. What's worse, at $JOB, at(1) and batch(1) have been un > installed on Linux (while they remain on the other platforms) because the sen > ior Linux person (who left our employ three weeks ago) felt people didn't und > erstand the utilities and, they could add anything to cron for a day if they > wanted. > > The idea of removing at(1) and batch(1) is not new. People generally have no > idea what they do and people are unwilling to chance using them or learning s > omething new because they're busy working. That's my experience. Looking at the wiki page, integration of atrun into cron as NetBSD has done, is obvious. Solaris, HP-UX and every other platform I've used (which is no longer produced today) have had the atrun functionality performed by cron itself. This is a no brainer. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert@cschubert.com> FreeBSD UNIX: <cy@FreeBSD.org> Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.
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