Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!wa3wbu!john From: john@wa3wbu.UUCP (John Gayman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Cron Message-ID: <449@wa3wbu.UUCP> Date: 5 Jan 88 12:41:16 GMT References: <11098@brl-adm.ARPA> Organization: WA3WBU, Marysville,PA Lines: 24 Summary: do not really need cron In article <11098@brl-adm.ARPA>, FRAZIER%AFGLSC.SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU (S. W. FRAZIER) writes: > > noticed that cron is not being spawned when the system starts up. > Do I actually HAVE to have cron running? What are the consequences Usually cron is fired up in /etc/rc along with possibly your LP scheduler, errdemon and several other things which can be started at boot time. The only purpose of cron is to make certain types of operations either automatic or time dependant. Ive seen some systems that do not use cron at all. If you prefer to do the housekeeping manually, then you do not need cron. And if all else fails, just re-start cron manually from root. At different times here, if I make a change in the cron time-table, I don not re-boot the whole machine. I simply kill the current cron job process and start it again from the console. The time/jobs are read in at execution time. Hope this helps. John -- John Gayman, WA3WBU | UUCP: uunet!wa3wbu!john 1869 Valley Rd. | ARPA: wa3wbu!john@uunet.UU.NET Marysville, PA 17053 | Packet: WA3WBU @ AK3P