Debian bug report logs - #377
cron on notebooks (was Re: admin packages moved)

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From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Thu Feb  2 03:48:52 1995
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Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 01:29 GMT
From: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>
Cc: Matt Birkholz <birkholz@primenet.com>
Subject: cron on notebooks (was Re: admin packages moved)
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	<m0rZCPW-0005RBC@dagobah.primenet.com>

Package: cron?

(I'm filing this as a bug as I think it should be fixed ...)

Matt Birkholz writes ("admin packages moved"):
> Making the vixie cron daemon notebook-friendly is going to be a bit of a
> problem.  One of its features is that it stat's its spool directory once a
> minute to detect changes to crontab files.  Thus, the crontab command
> doesn't have to signal the daemon; it just bumps the modtime of the spool
> directory.[ref third paragraph of the cron(8) manpage.]

Well, experimentation shows that stat() doesn't change the access time
on a directory, so it shouldn't dirty the inode.

> I'm guessing this is why my disk never spins down.  (Actually, I don't see
> why the inode for the spool directory doesn't stay in the buffer cache...)

It certainly should.  I suggest that something else on your system is
regularly dirtying inodes.  Do you have `at' installed ?

Try removing the crontab line for atrun and see what happens then.

Ian.

Message sent:

From: iwj@cam-orl.co.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
Subject: Bug#377: Acknowledgement (was: cron on notebooks (was Re: admin packages moved))
In-Reply-To: <m0rZTsW-0002g8Z.ijackson@nyx.cs.du.edu>
References: <m0rZTsW-0002g8Z.ijackson@nyx.cs.du.edu>

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Ian Jackson
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Subject: Bug#377: cron on notebooks (was Re: admin packages moved)
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Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 01:29 GMT
From: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>
Cc: Matt Birkholz <birkholz@primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <m0rZCPW-0005RBC@dagobah.primenet.com>
References: <m0rYjUI-0002g8Z.ijackson@nyx.cs.du.edu>
	<m0rZCPW-0005RBC@dagobah.primenet.com>

Package: cron?

(I'm filing this as a bug as I think it should be fixed ...)

Matt Birkholz writes ("admin packages moved"):
> Making the vixie cron daemon notebook-friendly is going to be a bit of a
> problem.  One of its features is that it stat's its spool directory once a
> minute to detect changes to crontab files.  Thus, the crontab command
> doesn't have to signal the daemon; it just bumps the modtime of the spool
> directory.[ref third paragraph of the cron(8) manpage.]

Well, experimentation shows that stat() doesn't change the access time
on a directory, so it shouldn't dirty the inode.

> I'm guessing this is why my disk never spins down.  (Actually, I don't see
> why the inode for the spool directory doesn't stay in the buffer cache...)

It certainly should.  I suggest that something else on your system is
regularly dirtying inodes.  Do you have `at' installed ?

Try removing the crontab line for atrun and see what happens then.

Ian.