[gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:59:09 Lie Ryan wrote: On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron? A default install will configure cron to run mkwhatis slocate logrotate updatepciids updateusbids These are all very useful and your machine is somewhat crippled without them. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:59:09 +1000 Lie Ryan wrote: On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron? Possibly not. ... depends on what you have installed. /etc/cron.daily has some useful stuff, notably slocate.cron.
[gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On 04/17/10 23:08, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:59:09 Lie Ryan wrote: On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron? A default install will configure cron to run mkwhatis slocate logrotate updatepciids updateusbids I don't install `locate` as I don't have that many files to start with and `find` is more than adequate for when I need to search (and I typically only do searches on newly downloaded file or system files, those that aren't indexed in locate's database in the first place). In a typical desktop system you only rarely actually read logs (typically only when debugging kernel, X, and failed emerge; you don't meet kernel OOPS every day, don't you?), for the rest of the times I could probably live without logging and I can turn it on when I need to examine some logs. A typical desktop system do not update their hardware everyday and running those updater programs manually isn't such a pain when you do (on the other hand I run `emerge --sync` and `q -r` every week, but then I still much prefer running emerges manually). And bash's tab completion is much more efficient for searching commands than `whatis`. So I don't think a typical desktop system gets crippled much without cron (or even logging). Yes, you lose some features, and you will need to manually update system's database and do certain things manually which otherwise would have been handled for you; but if I have to choose between wasting system resources running cron/logging or losing features I use once in a month, I probably would not bother with cron.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:08:22 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:59:09 Lie Ryan wrote: On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron? A default install will configure cron to run mkwhatis slocate logrotate updatepciids updateusbids These are all very useful and your machine is somewhat crippled without them. Hmm... mine has: ls -la /etc/cron.daily/ total 10 drwxr-x--- 2 root root 7 Mar 14 19:11 . drwxr-xr-x 74 root root 160 Apr 17 14:58 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 21 01:33 .keep -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 28 15:13 .keep_sys-process_cronbase-0 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 52 Feb 28 15:15 logrotate.cron -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 115 Mar 14 19:11 makewhatis -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 152 Feb 28 15:15 slocate but not updatepciids and updateusbids. Grant you I don't need them daily, but last time I checked I had to update these myself. Should they have been added automatically in my /etc/cron.daily/* ? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 17:10:14 Mick wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:08:22 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:59:09 Lie Ryan wrote: On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron? A default install will configure cron to run mkwhatis slocate logrotate updatepciids updateusbids These are all very useful and your machine is somewhat crippled without them. Hmm... mine has: ls -la /etc/cron.daily/ total 10 drwxr-x--- 2 root root 7 Mar 14 19:11 . drwxr-xr-x 74 root root 160 Apr 17 14:58 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 21 01:33 .keep -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 28 15:13 .keep_sys-process_cronbase-0 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 52 Feb 28 15:15 logrotate.cron -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 115 Mar 14 19:11 makewhatis -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 152 Feb 28 15:15 slocate but not updatepciids and updateusbids. Grant you I don't need them daily, but last time I checked I had to update these myself. Should they have been added automatically in my /etc/cron.daily/* ? They go in cron.monthly, but no matter. Do you have these packages installed: nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids ... sys-apps/pciutils-3.1.7 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids) nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids ... sys-apps/usbutils-0.87 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 16:39:19 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 17:10:14 Mick wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:08:22 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 14:59:09 Lie Ryan wrote: On 04/17/10 18:47, Mick wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 22:25:47 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Friday 16 April 2010 20:29:27 Dale wrote: Blimey! That sounds like horribly_broken! Which cron do you recommend for a desktop? One question, do you actually need cron for desktop? I installed vixie because the installation manual says to, but never need to write any cron rule for anything and I don't think there any program I uses installs a cron rule. So why bother with cron? A default install will configure cron to run mkwhatis slocate logrotate updatepciids updateusbids These are all very useful and your machine is somewhat crippled without them. Hmm... mine has: ls -la /etc/cron.daily/ total 10 drwxr-x--- 2 root root 7 Mar 14 19:11 . drwxr-xr-x 74 root root 160 Apr 17 14:58 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 21 01:33 .keep -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 28 15:13 .keep_sys-process_cronbase-0 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 52 Feb 28 15:15 logrotate.cron -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 115 Mar 14 19:11 makewhatis -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 152 Feb 28 15:15 slocate but not updatepciids and updateusbids. Grant you I don't need them daily, but last time I checked I had to update these myself. Should they have been added automatically in my /etc/cron.daily/* ? They go in cron.monthly, but no matter. Do you have these packages installed: nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids ... sys-apps/pciutils-3.1.7 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids) nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids ... sys-apps/usbutils-0.87 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids) Hmm ... Nill returns. :-( I have however already installed both pciutils and usbutils. Are they meant to make entries in cron.daily when installed? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On 04/17/2010 11:12 AM, Mick wrote: I have however already installed both pciutils and usbutils. Are they meant to make entries in cron.daily when installed? I just discovered the network-cron useflag, thanks :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 20:12:42 Mick wrote: Do you have these packages installed: nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids ... sys-apps/pciutils-3.1.7 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids) nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids ... sys-apps/usbutils-0.87 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids) Hmm ... Nill returns. :-( I have however already installed both pciutils and usbutils. Are they meant to make entries in cron.daily when installed? Not at all. They are meant to install crontabs in cron.monthly -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 21:55:52 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 20:12:42 Mick wrote: Do you have these packages installed: nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids ... sys-apps/pciutils-3.1.7 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids) nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids ... sys-apps/usbutils-0.87 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids) Hmm ... Nill returns. :-( I have however already installed both pciutils and usbutils. Are they meant to make entries in cron.daily when installed? Not at all. They are meant to install crontabs in cron.monthly No luck there either: # ls -la /etc/cron.monthly/ total 9 drwxr-x--- 2 root root 4 Feb 28 15:13 . drwxr-xr-x 74 root root 160 Apr 17 22:58 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 21 01:33 .keep -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 28 15:13 .keep_sys-process_cronbase-0 What's gone wrong? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Saturday 17 April 2010 23:01:19 you wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 21:55:52 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Saturday 17 April 2010 20:12:42 Mick wrote: Do you have these packages installed: nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids ... sys-apps/pciutils-3.1.7 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-pciids) nazgul ~ # equery belongs /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids * Searching for /etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids ... sys-apps/usbutils-0.87 (/etc/cron.monthly/update-usbids) Hmm ... Nill returns. :-( I have however already installed both pciutils and usbutils. Are they meant to make entries in cron.daily when installed? Not at all. They are meant to install crontabs in cron.monthly No luck there either: # ls -la /etc/cron.monthly/ total 9 drwxr-x--- 2 root root 4 Feb 28 15:13 . drwxr-xr-x 74 root root 160 Apr 17 22:58 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 21 01:33 .keep -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 28 15:13 .keep_sys-process_cronbase-0 What's gone wrong? Doh! Just saw Walter's post - better set up network-cron flag then. :-) -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:10:01 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote about Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping: On Saturday 17 April 2010 20:12:42 Mick wrote: [snip] Are they meant to make entries in cron.daily when installed? Not at all. They are meant to install crontabs in cron.monthly Strictly speaking, they install scripts in /etc/cron.monthly. The crontabs are installed somewhere under /var; exactly where varies with cron daemon. -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] == dwn...@ntlworld.com (David W Noon) == signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Thursday 15 April 2010, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2010 02:58:15 Matt Harrison wrote: I apologise if this has come twice, it didn't appear to post correctly first time, not even on the archives. Its been happening for a while but I haven't got round to find out why, but every so often (anything between a week or an hour) vixie-cron just stops. There's nothing in the logs, the service just stops. I have no idea where to start looking for a culprit so I'm hoping someone here has some good ideas :) thanks in advance Matt You probably don't want to hear this, but: vixie-cron is problematic in the extreme. I have endless hassle with it's weird behaviours. Use a different cron daemon. Your advice is vague :) I use app-admin/syslog-ng and I wouldn't change, Alan you too can try it. Ciao Francesco -- Linux Version 2.6.33-gentoo-r1, Compiled #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Apr 10 17:35:50 CEST 2010 Two 2.9GHz AMD Athlon 64 Processors, 4GB RAM, 11659 Bogomips Total aemaeth
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On 16 Apr 2010, at 18:58, Francesco Talamona wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2010, Alan McKinnon wrote: ... You probably don't want to hear this, but: vixie-cron is problematic in the extreme. I have endless hassle with it's weird behaviours. Use a different cron daemon. Your advice is vague :) I use app-admin/syslog-ng and I wouldn't change, Alan you too can try it. syslog-ng is a system logger, not a cron daemon. I appreciate this is an easy mistake to make, as they are adjacent in the Gentoo installation instructions, and we generally ignore both components when they are working normally. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron keeps stopping
On Friday 16 April 2010 19:58:23 Francesco Talamona wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2010, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 15 April 2010 02:58:15 Matt Harrison wrote: I apologise if this has come twice, it didn't appear to post correctly first time, not even on the archives. Its been happening for a while but I haven't got round to find out why, but every so often (anything between a week or an hour) vixie-cron just stops. There's nothing in the logs, the service just stops. I have no idea where to start looking for a culprit so I'm hoping someone here has some good ideas :) thanks in advance Matt You probably don't want to hear this, but: vixie-cron is problematic in the extreme. I have endless hassle with it's weird behaviours. Use a different cron daemon. Your advice is vague :) To answer this point: vixie-cron does not reliably restart. You have to remember to kill it, verify that it is indeed dead, then start it. Of course, my use case is a lot more complex than just /etc/cron.*/* and yes, I do expect a cron daemon to cope with my needs in it's stride. It's not hard to cope with a 1000 line crontab. I have auth daemons running on ancient hardware with 256M RAM that have to deal with 100+ auth requests a second and a 5000-line config file. Despite my needs being complex, any cron daemon should cope with that without breaking a sweat -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
