That argument assumes that cron's parser hasn't been improved or
fixed, which is inconsistent with this changelog entry:
* entry.c
- Explicitly check for valid ranges in range values instead of upstream's
broken approach which misses certain combinations of ranges and steps.
Closes: #533726
Apparently, this upgrading cron across that version may cause some
crontabs that used to run (with unknown behavior) to no longer be run,
and (if my recollection of someone else's description of Debian's cron
behavior are both accurate) later crontabs from the same file ignored,
even though they would've been run before the upgrade.
Justin
On Sun, May 09, 2010 at 09:33:10PM +0000, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> Your message dated Sun, 09 May 2010 23:32:00 +0200
> with message-id <4be729d0.60...@kvr.at>
> and subject line Re: Bug#580887: notify user if his crontab is no longer
> valid upon upgrade
> has caused the Debian Bug report #580887,
> regarding notify user if his crontab is no longer valid upon upgrade
> to be marked as done.
>
> This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
> If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
> Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
>
> (NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
> message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
> misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact ow...@bugs.debian.org
> immediately.)
>
>
> --
> 580887: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=580887
> Debian Bug Tracking System
> Contact ow...@bugs.debian.org with problems
> From: jida...@jidanni.org
> To: sub...@bugs.debian.org
> Subject: notify user if his crontab is no longer valid upon upgrade
> Date: Sun, 09 May 2010 23:09:51 +0800
> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.5-bugs.debian.org_2005_01_02
> (2008-06-10) on busoni.debian.org
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> autolearn=ham version=3.2.5-bugs.debian.org_2005_01_02
>
> Package: cron
> Version: 3.0pl1-110
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Let's say the user has a working crontab for years.
> Well, upon upgrading cron one day it stops working.
> He doesn't notice it at first, but after a few days he thinks, 'why is
> my coffee not ready on time?" etc.
>
> Well,
> $ crontab -l|diff file -
> shows his crontab is A-OK.
>
> Even though there should be no need, he does
> $ crontab file
> whereupon an *ERROR* is reported.
>
> Well, it would be nice if upon upgrade, every user's crontab is checked
> to see if it is still considered error free with the new version of
> cron, and if not, then at least mail the user to tell him.
>
> It doesn't matter if it is the users fault, or a bug in cron, that
> caused the user's formerly OK crontab to now become not OK. Just please
> notify the user, and perhaps now make
> $ crontab -l
> #Your crontab has errors with version xxx of cron. Here it is commented
> #out below.
>
>
> From: Christian Kastner <deb...@kvr.at>
> To: jida...@jidanni.org, 580887-d...@bugs.debian.org
> Subject: Re: Bug#580887: notify user if his crontab is no longer valid upon
> upgrade
> Date: Sun, 09 May 2010 23:32:00 +0200
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> (2008-06-10) on busoni.debian.org
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>
> On 05/09/2010 05:09 PM, jida...@jidanni.org wrote:
> > Let's say the user has a working crontab for years.
> > Well, upon upgrading cron one day it stops working.
> > He doesn't notice it at first, but after a few days he thinks, 'why is
> > my coffee not ready on time?" etc.
> >
> > Well,
> > $ crontab -l|diff file -
> > shows his crontab is A-OK.
> >
> > Even though there should be no need, he does
> > $ crontab file
> > whereupon an *ERROR* is reported.
> >
> > Well, it would be nice if upon upgrade, every user's crontab is checked
> > to see if it is still considered error free with the new version of
> > cron, and if not, then at least mail the user to tell him.
>
> This doesn't have to be even a wishlist bug, because 1) it will never
> happen and 2) even if it would, a sane upgrade path would be a given.
>
> Ad 1: The structure is standardized by POSIX[1]. In fact, it's been this
> way for 30+ years. All attempts to change it have been denied for this
> reason, even if they made a lot of sense (see #460070 for example).
>
> Ad 2: Even if we did decide to implement Debian-specific extensions[2],
> we'd do it in backwards-compatible way, similar to the syslogd ->
> rsyslog transition. We'd have to, because otherwise we would break
> enormous amounts of stuff, eg. package crontabs in /etc/cron.d and the
> user crontabs you mentioned.
>
> I appreciate your worries, but as you can see, they are unnecessary.
>
> Thanks,
> Christian
>
> [1] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/crontab.html
> [2] For example #373152, #233632
>
>
>
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