[Wolves] SuSE and more odd stuff...

[Stuart Langridge]

Peter Oliver wrote:
>> Yes, the sysadmin could put stuff in root's crontab, but I think 
>> /etc/crontab's more discoverable.
> 
> Discoverability is hardly grounds for recommending something.  If you 
> have something recommended to you, you haven't discovered it.

Ah, you don't understand what I mena by "discoverable". I do not mean 
"can be worked out by someone who doesn't know what they're looking 
for". I mean "*I* can find it again six months after I put something in 
there", since I don't keep a logbook of changes.

I concede that this is perhaps not the dictionary definition :)

> Crontab (the command, as opposed to this /etc/crontab file) is available 
> to all users (not just root) and on all Unix-like systems.  I know this 
> is a Linux users group, but am I really so out-of-date by having the 
> notion that people still use multi-user Unix systems?

Um, I'm a bit confused here. I'd expect ordinary users to use their 
crontab, as indeed I do. I'm talking about stuff to do with system 
maintenance and so on here, which pretty much has to live in either 
/etc/crontab or root's crontab. Putting stuff in root's crontab doesn't 
quite seem right to me; that's for root as a user, not for the system 
itself. The difference here is pretty much an imaginary one that exists 
only in my head, but it seems to me that there's a distinction between 
stuff to do with the system itself (which lives in /etc, say) and stuff 
to do with root as a user (which would live in root's crontab, in /root, 
etc). This is why I think it's good that root has a home directory, 
/root. People who feel that root's filespace and the system's filespace 
are indistinguishable and the same thing probably don't recognise the 
existence of root as a user like other users (but a privileged one) and 
thus set root's home to / or something.

Aq.