Package: backup-manager
Version: 0.5.7-1
Severity: important
In version 0.5.7.1 of backup-manager, the cron script was moved from
/etc/cron.daily to /etc/cron.d. This has a rather undesirable side effect for
people who don't keep their system running continuously. Those people (like me)
usually have the anacron package installed to take care that maintenance tasks
are executed. Alas, anacron only looks for scripts in
/etc/cron.{daily,weekly,monthly}, but not in /etc/cron.d.
As the job for backup-manager is run at 4 a.m., it will not be run at all if the
system is down over night unless the system administrator makes changes to
the settings.
IMHO, this also violates the policy: quoting from section 9.5 of the Debian
Policy
Manual (version 3.6.1.1),
If a package wants to install a job that has to be executed via cron,
it should place a file with the name of the package in one or more of
the following directories:
/etc/cron.daily
/etc/cron.weekly
/etc/cron.monthly
As these directory names imply, the files within them are executed on
a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, respectively. The exact times are
listed in `/etc/crontab'.
And two paragraphs later, the Policy Manual states:
If a certain job has to be executed more frequently than daily, the
package should install a file `/etc/cron.d/<package>'.[...]
Note that entries in the `/etc/cron.d' directory are not handled by
`anacron'. Thus, you should only use this directory for jobs which
may be skipped if the system is not running.
As backup-manager is to be run at most once per day, it should not put a
script in /etc/cron.d. So, the lesser evil may be to restore the old
behaviour of placing a script in cron.daily.
Workaround for people who have their computer turned off at nighttime:
put the following script in /etc/cron.daily (resp. /etc/cron.weekly or
/etc/cron.monthly):
#!/bin/sh
# /etc/cron.daily/backup-manager
test -x /usr/sbin/backup-manager || exit 0
/usr/sbin/backup-manager
And don't forget to chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/backup-manager .
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.31
Locale: LANG=de_DE, LC_CTYPE=de_DE (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages backup-manager depends on:
ii debconf 1.4.30.13 Debian configuration management sy
ii gzip 1.3.5-10 The GNU compression utility
-- debconf information excluded
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