Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:30:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@acm.org> To: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: misc/28920: periodic scripts do not run on desktop systems that aren't always on Message-ID: <200107121730.f6CHUEv78912@freefall.freebsd.org>
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>Number: 28920
>Category: misc
>Synopsis: periodic scripts do not run on desktop systems that aren't always on
>Confidential: no
>Severity: non-critical
>Priority: low
>Responsible: freebsd-bugs
>State: open
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: current-users
>Arrival-Date: Thu Jul 12 10:40:00 PDT 2001
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: Tim Kientzle
>Release: 4.3 Release
>Organization:
Independent Software Consultant
>Environment:
FreeBSD ugly.kientzle.com 4.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE #0: Thu Jun 14 11:18:04 PDT 2001 root@ugly.kientzle.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/UGLY i386
>Description:
System periodic scripts are run from crontab in the wee
hours of the morning. If the system isn't on all the time,
those scripts never run. This causes a variety of problems:
locate is useless, security checks are never performed,
/tmp cleanup never happens, etc.
>How-To-Repeat:
Turn off your computer at 5pm. Turn it back on at 9am
and note that root has no email. ;-)
>Fix:
The obvious workaround: leave the system on all
the time. This is impossible for some (laptops),
and undesirable for many others (electricity is
getting more expensive).
A more involved solution is to rewrite the 'periodic'
program called by crontab so that:
* It is run at frequent intervals.
* It keeps a database recording when each periodic
task was last run.
* If the system is on at 2am (or some other preferred time),
it will preferentially run periodic tasks at that time.
Thus, servers and other always-on systems will have exactly
the same behavior as before: all periodic tasks are
run at a predictable time.
* If a periodic task is significantly overdue (due to the
system being off), then it will get run at other times
at reduced priority.
I've written a replacement for 'periodic' that does
all of the above. It's written in Perl and is very
nearly a drop-in replacement that provides the same
user-land behavior as the standard 'periodic'.
It would certainly make sense to have this
revised periodic installed separately, though, since it does
operate a bit differently.
Full source available on request.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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