[Sussex] cron/anacron question

[Thomas Adam]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 11:51:55PM +0000, Gavin Stevens wrote:
> Hi all,

> First, every time I use the computer, one or other of these kicks
> in after about 5 minutes & does stuff which results in my dial-up
> connection becoming very slow (I am usually getting my e-mails at the
> time cron/anacron kicks in), although cron/anacron doesn't seem to be
> trying to access the web itself.

This is probably some sort of cleanup operation using find. You'd have
to check /etc/cron.* to ascertain this. Or it could be a general update
of your manpath DB. Since you say it is usually every five minutes after
you turn your computer on, it's probably anacron doing this.

> I have noticed that the xconsole readout talks about leafnode & few
> other things. I would like to be able to stop these things from
> happening, because it is annoying & I don't use leafnode & the other
> things mentioned in xconsole.

That has nothing to do with the jobs scheduled via (ana)cron.

> Removing such unecessary activity is part & parcel of me tidying up
> my system to get it more as I want it, prior to some big upgrading -
> namely, compiling a 2.6.x kernel & upgrading Debian.

Well, the defaults given in the Debian *cron* packages are acceptable,
usually. The find-cleanup routine is done at times that have never
inconvenienced me.

> If it is of any use, I know that there are daily & monthly versions
> of cron & anacron. Am I also right in thinking that anacron would be
> better suited to my PC as I always shut the machine down & turn it off
> when I am not using it.

It depends. Anacron does not depend on time, whereas Cron does. I see
you haven't noted that here is also a daily version for *cron*

> So some general pointers would be useful at this stage, which will
> give me a better understanding of how these 2 apps function & how to
> make them work for my purposes.

Well, anacron is used primarily as a means for tasks that are to be run
not based on time. The Debian defaults are such that cron uses anacron
to schedule its tasks if anacron is available. The folders
/etc/cron.{daily,hourly,weekly,monthly} all contain scripts of some kind
which are run at their respective times, using the run-parts(8)
command to run all scripts in the folders scheduled to run.

Thus if you wanted to run a task monthly, you'd just create a shell
script and dump it in /etc/cron.monthly . You could edit the
/etc/anacron file by hand if you wanted.

It all depends on what you want to do. You'll have to be much more
specific to get a more accurate answer.

-- Thomas Adam

-- 
I know nothing, and understand even less.