Do you use cron?

Message

30726 · Post by **30726** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:54 pm

I use cron for rotation of the logs and backing up stuff. vixie-cron if that matters. Can anyone tell me what the difference is between the different cron daemons? I've seen this question before, but I've never actually seen a good answer.

Blue Fox · Post by **Blue Fox** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 11:20 pm

I'm curious too...

pandaxiongmao · Post by **pandaxiongmao** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 12:03 am

I got vixie-cron installed, but I don't have any idea how to use cron (and the purpose of having cron). Is there any good guide about that cron stuff? I hope that will be useful for me in the future.

30726 · Post by **30726** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 12:08 am

The purpose of having a cron daemon is so that you can do tasks at specific times. Lets say you want to emerge sync every day, then you'll just add a crontab entry that'll do that.

pandaxiongmao · Post by **pandaxiongmao** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 1:04 am

tln wrote:The purpose of having a cron daemon is so that you can do tasks at specific times. Lets say you want to emerge sync every day, then you'll just add a crontab entry that'll do that.

Thanks for the explanation. Wew, there are lots of stuff that I have to learn.

rfujimoto · Post by **rfujimoto** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 6:56 am

I use cron somewhat. On my server I use cron a lot. I haven't found too many good uses for cron on my desktop aside from teaching Spam Assassin and updatedb'ing

I can't believe how many times people sync their tree. Every 4 hours, wow!

Once a day is a lot if you ask me, but I guess I'm in the minority here...

Blue Fox · Post by **Blue Fox** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 12:00 pm

You can find all you need to know about cron in:
man 5 crontab

Wi1d · Post by **Wi1d** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 5:58 pm

Heres mine.

Code: Select all

MAILTO=Me
# Monthly
0 12 5,10,20 * * /usr/sbin/logrotate --verbose /etc/logrotate.conf

# Frequent
4 3 * * * /etc/init.d/portsentry stop
5 3 * * * /usr/sbin/chkrootkit
7 3 * * * /etc/init.d/portsentry start
15 3 * * * /usr/bin/emerge rsync >/dev/null 2>&1
30 3 * * * /usr/bin/emerge -up system
35 3 * * * /usr/sbin/fixpackages >/dev/null 2>&1
45 3 * * * /usr/bin/updatedb 1>/dev/null 2>&1

# Often
#0 * * * * /usr/bin/rdate -s time.nist.gov

hollywoodb · Post by **hollywoodb** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 8:26 pm

at 4:00 am:
emerge sync && emerge -fuD world
(fetches all the tarballs for me so I can decide what to emerge later)

at 5:30 am:
slocate -u

Unne · Post by **Unne** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 10:37 pm

I use vixie-cron. I run fetchmail every 5 minutes, and run sa-learn every night at midnight on my local spam inboxes. In addition to makewhatis and updatedb, etc.

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 11:18 pm

I use vixie-cron to run fetchmail every 10 minutes and to check my IP every 2 minutes and (if it has changed) update my dyndns thingy.

C1REX · Post by **C1REX** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 2:12 am

I don' t have cron. I don't need it.

Senso · Post by **Senso** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 2:51 am

PowerFactor wrote:eventualy
Gentoo's default /tmp cleaning boot script(it's in bootmisc) doesn't clean /tmp very agressively. And sometimes I don't reboot for a long time anyway. Especialy my server.

Just pray it doesn't clean out /tmp while compiling something important.

codergeek42 · Post by **codergeek42** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 3:21 am

Yup. Vixie-cron user.

Weekly: emerge sync, logrotate
Daily: updatedb

I prolly should set it to make a backup of /home/peter/ and /var/www/html every few days or something, but oh well.

ColeSlaw · Post by **ColeSlaw** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 3:28 am

I run mythfilldatabase for my mythtv at 6:00 AM every morning!

Genone · Post by **Genone** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 4:03 am

How else should I get a new portage version every day ?

PowerFactor · Post by **PowerFactor** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 7:03 am

Senso wrote:Just pray it doesn't clean out /tmp while compiling something important.

That's why I have it do something a bit more selective than "rm -fr /tmp/*" That would be bad for any X session I had runing at the time too.

hook · Post by **hook** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 7:29 am

i'd love to use cron ...but i have a feeling that i won't be able too for quite some time

at the moment, i have a dual-boot PC with my brother - so there's no way to run it that long to make really good use of cron

in a year, i hope to bring together enough money to buy myself a laptop ...which again isn't that suited from cron, since you don't have it on 24/7 -_-

...i'm cursed, what can i say ...maybe when i make that backup-server

tihkal · Post by **tihkal** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 10:08 am

Vixie-cron here.

Syncing portege.
Updating time.
Updating ClamAV's definitions.
Backing up home directories, digital photos and other oddities.
Other personal overnight "house cleaning"...

The usual stuff.

georwell · Post by **georwell** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 10:33 am

I use cron for many things so I will just post one of them. I have a script that runs every 20 minutes making sure sshd is up and running. If you remote servers, it sure is a pain in the ass if sshd isn't running.

dsegel · Post by **dsegel** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 2:35 pm

adammc wrote:I use vixie-cron too - emerge sync at mid-day, emerge -uDpv world at 12.30 and emerge -uDpv system at 12.35; very useful for keeping an eye on what needs updating without actually doing anything.

'world' encompasses 'system' as well as other stuff you've emerged, so this is redundant.

adammc · Post by **adammc** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 2:44 pm

dsegel wrote:
adammc wrote:I use vixie-cron too - emerge sync at mid-day, emerge -uDpv world at 12.30 and emerge -uDpv system at 12.35; very useful for keeping an eye on what needs updating without actually doing anything.
'world' encompasses 'system' as well as other stuff you've emerged, so this is redundant.

not exactly, since this way I can see which updates are part of system and which aren't - I keep everything in system more up to date than everything else, but still like to keep an eye on world for any specific updates I've been waiting for.

mrmodin · Post by **mrmodin** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 11:24 pm

naah, I have never figured out how I could make a good use of a cron.

blaksaga · Post by **blaksaga** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:42 am

vixie-cron empties my trash bins every night.

Blue Fox · Post by **Blue Fox** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:47 pm

blaksaga wrote:vixie-cron empties my trash bins every night.

Simple but pretty smart