Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Raul Miller writes (Re: Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops): Ian Jackson: Perhaps savelog should be moved into another package, then ? This seems like a very good idea. miscutils is probably the right one. Ian.
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Is there any point in establishing an init runlevel for undocked operation - that is, using a laptop away from AC power? Some laptops are capable of sensing when they go on and off of AC and could change the run level on their own. I can think of situations where you would want cron to run when AC was available. This sounds like a neat concept. Run-levels are rather limitted, but this seems to fit in with existing uses of the concept. I don't suppose there's any sort of run-level registry anywhere? -- Raul
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops (fwd)
You (Raul Miller) wrote: Is there any point in establishing an init runlevel for undocked operation - that is, using a laptop away from AC power? Some laptops are capable of sensing when they go on and off of AC and could change the run level on their own. I can think of situations where you would want cron to run when AC was available. This sounds like a neat concept. Run-levels are rather limitted, but this seems to fit in with existing uses of the concept. It would be trivial to add runlevels 7, 8 and 9 to init- I'll do that in the next release (just change a few checks here and there). -- Miquel van| Cistron Internet Services --Alphen aan den Rijn. Smoorenburg, | mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cistron.nl/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Tel: +31-172-419445 (Voice) 430979 (Fax) 442580 (Data)
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Raul Miller writes (Re: Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops): I think there's a good answer to this question, but I doubt the above workaround to the current package implementation of cron will occur to very many people. How about taking cron out of rc*.d ? Ian.
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Raul Miller: I think there's a good answer to this question, but I doubt the above workaround to the current package implementation of cron will occur to very many people. Ian Jackson: How about taking cron out of rc*.d ? Plausible. Remember, this is a space-cramped laptop. Here, I wind up paying for about 70k of storage to get a 6.7k executable. [This is more an administrative annoyance factor than a space issue.] More importantly, as these rc*.d/???cron files aren't conffiles, this loses every time you do a dselect install with a new cron-*.deb file accessible. Perhaps it's time to make a way of registering changes to non-conffiles as local-conffiles in /var/lib/dpkg/status? -- Raul
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Is there any point in establishing an init runlevel for undocked operation - that is, using a laptop away from AC power? Some laptops are capable of sensing when they go on and off of AC and could change the run level on their own. I can think of situations where you would want cron to run when AC was available. Thanks Bruce -- Bruce Perens [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pixar Animation Studios
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
What does AC power have to do with run-parts ?? run-parts is just a utility to run all the scripts in a directory. I think you should think where else this problem should be solved - possible the answer is to modify your /etc/crontab. Yes. On second thought I shouldn't be running cron on this particular laptop at all. The default configuration for cron does bad things to the laptop. However, savelog is a part of the cron package. And, I very much need savelog on this machine. What I've done for the moment is: (1) edit /var/lib/dpkg/info/cron.list to remove the entry referring to savelog. (2) dpkg --purge cron (3) put a named /etc/rc.boot/savelog on the system which runs savelog on all /var/log/* files that don't have numbers in their names, then deletes all emtpy files with numbers in their names. Which brings me back to your question: What does AC power have to do with run-parts ?? I think there's a good answer to this question, but I doubt the above workaround to the current package implementation of cron will occur to very many people. -- Raul
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Raul Miller writes (Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops): run-parts should probably not do what it normally does, when a laptop doesn't have AC power. This could be implemented with something along the lines of: What does AC power have to do with run-parts ?? run-parts is just a utility to run all the scripts in a directory. I think you should think where else this problem should be solved - possible the answer is to modify your /etc/crontab. Ian.
Bug#1995: run-parts on laptops
Package: miscutils Version: 1.3 Revision: 5 run-parts should probably not do what it normally does, when a laptop doesn't have AC power. This could be implemented with something along the lines of: die helpful message\n unless system grep 'AC: off line' /proc/apm 2/dev/null; Presumably, the helpful message would identify some option to use (e.g. manually) to get run-parts to do its thing even without external power. That is, there should be some option (or lack of option) for run-parts to run even without external power, and when run-parts shuts down for lack of power, it should document this option and the original argument. The logic here is that hard disk access on a laptop is very hard on the battery. Running find from cron.daily or cron.weekly could drain the battery entirely, leaving an unusable system. -- Raul
