Forum: Cfengine Help Subject: Re: Random variable persistence problem -- crontab randomization Author: mark Link to topic: https://cfengine.com/forum/read.php?3,20077,20078#msg-20078
Jennifer, take care over this. Are you sure you want a "random time"? This is a commonly (ab)used phrase. What people usually want to do is the spread the times out evenly over an interval in a predictable way. A random time could have all hosts changing their behaviour all of the time, and might not spread out the numbers at all. What the splaytime does in Cfengine is to "hash" hosts over an interval of time so that as few hosts collide as possible and times are distributed evenly over the interval. That is not at all random, but it maps each host to a very specific time (whose value you don't particularly care about). If you want a predictable scheduling, I recommend running commands from inside Cfengine. Don't try to edit random numbers into the cron file. Not sure if this helps, but it might clarify your request at the very least. _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org https://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
