From owner-freebsd-questions  Sun Jan  2 16:34:12 2000
Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (benge.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.43])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8823B14EEE
	for <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>; Sun,  2 Jan 2000 16:34:10 -0800 (PST)
	(envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu)
Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost)
	by benge.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA07780;
	Sun, 2 Jan 2000 19:33:54 -0500 (EST)
	(envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu)
Message-Id: <200001030033.TAA07780@benge.graphics.cornell.edu>
To: Ryan Thompson <freebsd@sasknow.com>
Cc: Ben Smithurst <ben@scientia.demon.co.uk>,
	Pekka Savola <Pekka.Savola@netcore.fi>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Huge crontab jobs are not run 
In-Reply-To: Message from Ryan Thompson <freebsd@sasknow.com> 
   of "Sun, 02 Jan 2000 18:05:10 CST." <Pine.BSF.4.10.10001021748190.34858-100000@sasknow.com> 
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2000 19:33:54 -0500
From: Mitch Collinsworth <mkc@Graphics.Cornell.EDU>
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG


>> > Did you kill -HUP cron?  If you didn't do this (or reboot the system),
>> > your job won't run.  
>> 
>> According to the manpage, you don't need to:
>> 
>> | Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its spool directory's
>> | modtime (or the modtime on /etc/crontab) has changed, and if it has, cron
>> | will then examine the modtime on all crontabs and reload those which have
>> | changed.  Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a crontab file is mod-
>> | ified.  Note that the crontab(1) command updates the modtime of the spool
>> | directory whenever it changes a crontab.
>
>Hmm... I stand corrected :-)  I haven't looked at than man page for quite
>some time.  Anyway, kill -HUP can't hurt, and might actually kick a few 
>things into shape if modtimes get set incorrectly :-)
>
><ASIDE> 
> Isn't checking all crontabs every minute kind of a waste of good
> resources in many cases?

I guess you *still* haven't looked at cron(8) in quite some time.  It
also states that the every minute check is done on the modtime of the
directory containing the per-user crontabs and the individual files
are only checked if the directory modtime has changed.  So in the
typical nothing-has-changed case, only two checks are done, one on
/etc/crontab and one on the spool directory.

Anything else we can read to you?  :-)

-Mitch


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message