Karsten Bräckelmann a écrit : > On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 20:44 +0200, mouss wrote: >> Karsten Bräckelmann a écrit : > >>> It's the same classic problem with uninspired admins, running such cron >>> jobs strictly at a full hour. >> In most cases, it's not the admins fault. many systems allow adding cron >> jobs by simply putting a file in a /some/path/hourly and so on instead >> of editing /etc/crontab (or running the crontab command). This is nice >> (exceptionally for packages when editing files is problematic), but on > > Don't they also provide an /etc/cron.d/ to dump a single cron job per > file including the ability to specify the full run time? Mine do. ;) >
debian/* and redhat/* do. Other linux distros probably have this cron.d too. but even then, people are naturally tempted to use the "easy" way (no cron format to care about). >> the other hand it doesn't provide flexibility for tasks such downloading >> data from a (more or less) central place. > > Randomization isn't particularly hard. > sleep $(( $RANDOM % 3600 )) > > The debian daily spamassassin update cron job does exactly this, FWIW. > does it allow for some control? I mean, I want it random, but during a specific interval (I would prefer not to sa-compile while the box is under load...).
