In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
on Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 12:59:21PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> Mac OS X is at its fourth major revision, and Apple still haven't put
> a tool like anacron in place to run scripts after the machine next
> starts up if it misses a timed job.
I have no idea why Apple has not been using anacron! However, in Tiger,
cron's functionality has been supposedly subsumed by Tiger's launchd.
From the launchd manual:
...Unlike cron which skips job invocations when the computer is
asleep, launchd will start the job the next time the computer wakes
up. If multiple intervals transpire before the computer is woken,
those events will be coalesced into one event upon wake from sleep.
Unfortunately, I think anacron is still required if the computer is shut
down instead of put to sleep. Conceptually, I think the reason for this
is that system launchd "unloads" its jobs at shutdown, and thus does not
understand that cron-type jobs should be run retrospectively at the next
startup. I guess launchd should (or already does) include some kind of
flag to express this requirement. However, I'm not sure if launchd yet
includes a persistence mechanism for storing its state between reboots.
