updating cron and atrun

[Josh Aas]

There seems to be a real question here about the value of at/atrun.
Maybe a good compromise is to move that functionality to ports instead
of the base system. If we integrate the functionality into cron then
we're basically stuck with it in core. All functionality adds
complexity, and complexity adds maintenance cost and risk. Sometimes
that's totally worth it, but I don't think it's clear that saddling
FreeBSD base with at/atrun because we integrated it with cron for
unclear reasons is necessarily a good idea.


On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 8:50 AM Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com> wrote:
>
> In message <55C50689-6DA8-4D44-92BB-72C38B54AC96 at cschubert.com>, Cy
> Schubert wr
> ites:
> > On February 9, 2020 2:10:35 AM PST, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wr
> > ote:
> > >--------
> > >In message <97A66670F59C9C626B5090E3 at triton.njm.me.uk>, "N.J. Mann"
> > >writes:
> > >>Hi,
> > >>
> > >>On Saturday, February 08, 2020 19:30:31 +0000 Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> Thanks for looking into this.
> > >>>
> > >>> Is at(1) something people actually use these days, or should it be
> > >>> disabled by default ?
> > >>
> > >>I do.  I use it to run various homebrew scripts in response to
> > >external
> > >>events.  I needed a delay (sometime minutes, sometimes hours) between
> > >>the event and the response and at(1) was a perfect fit.
> > >
> > >Right, it is absolutely useful to have, if you need it, and it should
> > >not be removed.
> > >
> > >But if, as I suspect, the vast majority of FreeBSD pointlessly add
> > >288 lines to /var/log/cron every day, without anybody ever using the
> > >at(1)
> > >command, maybe we should disable it to save power and disk-wear ?
> >
> > I use at at(1) and batch(1) all the time, on FreeBSD and other platforms. Mos
> > t people I know, professionally, don't know about these commands. They add th
> > e 288 lines to cron every day. They're not interested when I explain to them
> > a better way to do it. What's worse, at $JOB, at(1) and batch(1) have been un
> > installed on Linux (while they remain on the other platforms) because the sen
> > ior Linux person (who left our employ three weeks ago) felt people didn't und
> > erstand the utilities and, they could add anything to cron for a day if they
> > wanted.
> >
> > The idea of removing at(1) and batch(1) is not new. People generally have no
> > idea what they do and people are unwilling to chance using them or learning s
> > omething new because they're busy working. That's my experience.
>
> Looking at the wiki page, integration of atrun into cron as NetBSD has
> done, is obvious. Solaris, HP-UX and every other platform I've used (which
> is no longer produced today) have had the atrun functionality performed by
> cron itself. This is a no brainer.
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com>
> FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org
>
>         The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few.
>
>
>
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--
Josh Aas
(215) 206-2020