Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 11:24:51 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> To: Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> Cc: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: how to test out cron.c changes? (was: cvs commit: src/etc crontab) Message-ID: <20010110112451.A52255@mithrandr.moria.org> In-Reply-To: <200101100820.VAA28529@ducky.nz.freebsd.org>; from dan@langille.org on Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 09:20:13PM %2B1300 References: <3A5B5656.E2AAF0B5@FreeBSD.org> <200101100820.VAA28529@ducky.nz.freebsd.org>
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On Wed 2001-01-10 (21:20), Dan Langille wrote:
> > > And when you finally realize that everyone else thinks this is a great
> > > idea,
>
> I do not like being included in "everyone". I don't think it's a great idea.
If you didn't miss the comment, I was (and am now) attempting to emulate
Doug's style. (The "I don't like this change, and since nobody
commented, it must be a terrible thing" style.)
> > In fact, I'm quite sure that this is not true. I happen to be the only one
> > who is currently voicing opposition.
>
> IMHO, the solution is not to schedule jobs during during the changeover
> period. However, *if* the mods are adopted, it should default to off. Add
> a switch to turn them on. See how that runs for a few years. Then, and
> only then, if the feedback is positive, consider changing it to the default
> behaviour. Such a radical change to cron cannot be implemented
> without sufficient field testing. That will take years. It cannot be
> simulated.
These changes have been tested in OpenBSD for 3 years. The "solution"
is _not_ to tell people they're stupid to schedule jobs during the
changeover. It has nothing to do with them. If they want jobs at 2am
in the morning, that's cool. The fact the changeover is a problem is
cron-specific. It shouldn't be trying to be clever and work with local
time when local time does weird things like randomly add and remove time
from existence. However, since it _does_ have this "feature", we should
accomodate people who are negatively affected by it. It _will_ fix the
twice-yearly complaint about extra and missing jobs. It may create
unexpected behaviour for a tiny percentage. Those people should be
reading the release notes ("or they shouldn't be system administrators
or run FreeBSD").
Again, this change is from OpenBSD. We will synchronise with their
changes, and perhaps offer them back a patch to ignore what "ultra leet
sysadmins who rely on broken behaviour because people who don't are
simply stupid and shouldn't be running FreeBSD anyway!" with an option.
Neil
--
Neil Blakey-Milner
nbm@mithrandr.moria.org
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