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Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 19:13:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Joe Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com>
To: Dave VanAuken <dave@hawk-systems.com>
Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: Alarm clock ?
In-Reply-To: <DBEIKNMKGOBGNDHAAKGNKELHIBAA.dave@hawk-systems.com>
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I know I use this feature in Perl to do timeouts with SIGALRM.  Basically,
you wrap a block of code around calls to alarm().  If the code does not
return in the alotted amount of time, a SIGALRM is thrown.  If the code
doesn't catch it, the program usually dies with the message "Alarm clock".
So, to make a long story short, this is probably a script timing out.

If that is the case, and you don't want to see these messages anymore,
create a handler for SIGALRM.

Joe Clarke

On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Dave VanAuken wrote:

> We have a slew of scripts and cron entries doing various tasks..  recently have
> been tracking the occasioal mail from cron on a server...  mail reads simply
>
> 	Alarm clock
>
> This is coming from one of our scripts that does some ping tests on interfaces
> among other things...  not including wake me up every few hours :) so I don't
> know what the Alarm clock email is for.
>
> Insight?
>
> Dave
>
>
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