Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 03:20:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Donald Burr <dburr@POBoxes.com> To: "Stevan S." <sjsan@bga.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: HD running wild Message-ID: <XFMail.980616032058.dburr@POBoxes.com> In-Reply-To: <199806160711.CAA19407@zoom.bga.com>
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My secret spy satellite informs me that on 16-Jun-98, Stevan S. wrote:
> hard-drive
> became active after it had been idling for an hour. It kind of
> remembered
UNIX systems (and FreeBSD systems, by extension) come with a utility
called "cron." The purpose of this utility is to run specific jobs at
specific dates and/or times of the day. For example, it can be used to
perform automated backups of your system when you're not in, send you
reminder e-mail of upcoming events (anniversaries, birthdays, etc.), or do
other periodic/repetitive type "system maintenance" tasks.
(if you have used Windows 95 with the Microsoft "Plus! Pack" isntalled,
this feature is quite similar to the "System Agent" program that comes
with Plus!.)
One of hte things FreeBSD is set up to do, by default, is use "cron" to
run special "clean up" type jobs every night.
There are three jobs that are set up to run. These are:
Daily -- runs every day at 2:00 A.M.
This job reports on general system status. It e-mails you with
info on your system -- how full your hard disk(s) are (and how much space
is left), how well your network (or dial-up connection) is working, when
you have last done a backup (and when backups need to be done), etc. It
also checks every file on your computer, for possible security violations
(in case some malicious hacker has managed to slip a security breach in
while you weren't looking).
Weekly -- runs every week, on Saturday morning, at 3:30 AM.
This job rebuilds special data-bases that make searching "man"
pages and searching for speicfic files on your hard drive run much faster.
Monthly -- runs every month, on the 1st of that month, at 5:30 AM.
This job basically runs system accounting - it reports on what
your users have been doing, and how much "cpu time" they have used up, etc.
It souds like you ran into one of these jobs. (My guess is the "daily"
job.)
My sadvice to you: Don't Panic. These jobs do very beneficial and good
things, and can only stand to benefit both you and your system. They
don't really slow you down that much, either.
---
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