From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 10 12:47: 9 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from dt051n37.san.rr.com (dt051n37.san.rr.com [204.210.32.55]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E22F837B400 for ; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:46:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from slave (Studded@slave [10.0.0.1]) by dt051n37.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA91286; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:46:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from DougB@gorean.org) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:46:39 -0800 (PST) From: Doug Barton X-X-Sender: To: Gordon Tetlow Cc: Gerhard Sittig , Subject: Re: how to test out cron.c changes? (was: cvs commit: src/etc crontab) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Gordon Tetlow wrote: > Hello again. > > On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Doug Barton wrote: > > > Neil Blakey-Milner wrote: > > > > > > On Tue 2001-01-09 (02:14), Doug Barton wrote: > > > > The point I'm trying (obviously in vain) to make is having cron do what > > amounts to "slewing its internal clock" will not work for everyone, and > > violates POLA. > > Why won't "slewing it internal close" not work for everyone, I'm not > trying to be a pain, but I just don't know. Also, what is POLA? I've commented in detail in previous messages as to why cron not sticking to what the system clock tells it is a bad idea. POLA stands for "The Principle Of Least Astonishment," which means that when you introduce changes into an established system you should do so in a way that does the least damage to continuity from one system to another. The FreeBSD project introducing a variety of cron that departs dramatically from many years of established behavior would be a POLA violation. > > You (pl.) keep referring to the "We need to hand-hold users who are too > > stupid to figure this stuff out for themselves" argument. While there are a > > lot of areas of the system that I try to make simpler and easier to > > understand, I don't see how we can possibly make this problem foolproof. > > The universe keeps producing better fools. > > I don't consider myself stupid (maybe other's do =) but when I'm admin'ing > a box, I have a bunch of other things that I'm thinking about and this > usually falls through the cracks. I have a hard time even remembering when > the DST shift is so I can change my alarm clock to make it into work at a > resonable hour. With all due respect, we can't change the laws of physics to help you with this one. :) Time is one of those things that system administrators have to manage, in more ways than one. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message