cron.daily

[Scott Mazur]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 18:26:54 +1100, James Gray wrote
> On Tuesday 09 January 2007 12:05, Scott Mazur wrote:
<snip>
> > Did you restart the crond service?  Normally cron looks for changes to the
> > /etc/crontab file.  If this file hasn't changed, cron won't go looking for
> > your changes until it gets restarted.  I was recently burned on this 
> > myself :)
> 
> Eh??
> 
> $ cat crontab
> # /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
> # Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
> # command to install the new version when you edit this file.
> # This file also has a username field, that none of the other crontabs do.
> 
> ...and from the crond man page:
> 
> Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its spool 
> directory's modtime 
> (or the modtime on /etc/crontab) has changed, and if it has, cron 
> will then examine the modtime on all crontabs and reload those which 
> have changed. Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a crontab 
> file is modified.
> 
> Whatever bit you, had little to do with restarting cron :)

Yes, you're right.  cron checks /etc/crontab automatically to see if there are
 any changes, no restart required, and by definition, run-parts re-scans the
hourly, daily, weekly, monthly when they run so changes in these directories
will be picked up automatically as well.

I got bit on the /etc/cron.d directory which is not picked up automatically
unless cron is restarted (or the /etc/crontab file is changed to trigger a
refresh).  But my experience didn't apply to the OP (cron.daily) anyway.  The
hand types faster than the brain thinks :)

Scott

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