Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 12:30:23 -0800 From: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> To: Sergey Babkin <babkin@bellatlantic.net> Cc: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org>, Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, John Gregor <johng@vieo.com>, Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net, leifn@neland.dk, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, gjb@gbch.net Subject: Re: how to test out cron.c changes? (was: cvs commit: src/etc crontab) Message-ID: <3A6B46DF.7BE84F45@FreeBSD.org> References: <200101140244.f0E2i3518278@vieo.com> <3A621ABF.FA2C6432@bellatlantic.net> <200101142155.f0ELtLO64117@earth.backplane.com> <3A6A059C.486F6237@bellatlantic.net> <20010120235412.A42508@rapier.smartspace.co.za> <3A6B3D85.9773C9ED@bellatlantic.net>
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Sergey Babkin wrote:
>
> Neil Blakey-Milner wrote:
> >
> > On Sat 2001-01-20 (16:39), Sergey Babkin wrote:
> > > All,
> > >
> > > I've committed these changes for cron to support DST change
> > > to -current (see PR bin/24494 for description of my tests).
> > > Everyone is welcome to test them out.
> > > Please let me know if you encounter any problems caused by them
> > > (and better do that before these changes would be MFCed to -stable
> > > in a few weeks).
> >
> > I do believe this is premature. There really should at least be an
> > option for the old behaviour, and there is a good argument for making
> > the new behaviour optional dependent on a variable with the old
>
> Let me ask a simple question: Why ? What are the benefits of
> preserving the old behavior ? As far as I've watched this thread
> nobody had explained it. So could you please elaborate ?
The fact that you do not understand, or do not accept the many salient
points that have been made in opposition to this change does not mean that
they do not exist.
> On the other hand I clearly see the benefits of avoiding loss
> or duplication of once-a-day (or even more rare) cron jobs.
> If some job is scheduled once a day (or even once a week or
> once a month) then it's probably a rather heavy job. So running
> two of them at once is not a good thing even if they would not
> mess up each other but just slow down the machine. Skipping
> such a job seems to me as an almost equally bad thing.
> (Yes, I'm speaking from my personal experience as sysadmin as well).
>
> > behaviour default. _Especially_ if you intend to MFC this, since
> > changing this behaviour in a minor release, without a way to have the
> > old behaviour, is almost certainly wrong.
>
> That's why I asked for comments.
With changes of this magnitude we do not shoot first and ask questions
later. Both the proponents and opponents of this change agreed that AT
MINIMUM there should be a command line option to enable the new behavior. I
was planning to commit Gerhard's rc patches to allow for specifying flags
to cron during startup today (and still may get to it later) to make
testing the change easier. Personally, I had a lot of sympathy with the
idea of the proponents making a port of the new cron, but I could live with
the idea of a command line option, defaulting to the old behavior.
In either case, you need to back that commit out. Your actions were
premature and indefensable.
Doug
--
"Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory . . . lasts forever."
-- Keanu Reeves as Shane Falco in "The Replacements"
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