Change time updatedb is run

[Derek Broughton]

Gary Hodges wrote:

> On 1/18/06, albi <albi at scii.nl> wrote:
>> Gary Hodges wrote:
>>
>> > I'd like to change the time updatedb is run.  I've figured out it is
>> > run from a cron.daily entry and further investigation reveals the
>> > following file:
>> >
...  [anacrontab description]
>>
>> so i think that cron.daily will be run every day 5 minutes after you
>> boot up your machine, correct me if i'm wrong
>>
>> for daily tasks at a certain time i personally prefer to use cron
>> instead of anacron
>>
>> see :  man 5 crontab
> 
> I assumed it followed the same format as crontab which doesn't make
> sense now that I look at the weekly entry.  If a machine is running
> 24/7, then when would it be run?  Maybe I'll move the parts that run
> updatedb from cron.daily and make a separate job for them with
> crontab.

anacron won't run at all if you're running 24/7.  It gets kicked off at boot
time, and determines when it will run the jobs that cron _should have run_
while it was powered down.  Once it's run everything in its schedule,
anacron stops.

updatedb is a good choice for moving out of cron.daily for exactly the
reason you gave.  It's a processor hog and if your system is up and
unattended overnight, that's the best time for it.
-- 
derek