Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ncr-sd!greg
From: greg@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Cron
Message-ID: <2005@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 24 Jan 88 05:27:44 GMT
References: <11098@brl-adm.ARPA> <449@wa3wbu.UUCP> <6621@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Rancho Bernardo
Lines: 21

In article <5049@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> lvc@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
	(Lawrence V. Cipriani) writes:
>One thing I would like cron to do is run from /etc/inittab.

Yes!  Not only cron, but also the line printer scheduler and the error
daemon!  And, as he further points out, the modification is trivial for
all of them -- just change:
	if (fork()) exit(0);
to
	if (getppid() != 1) if (fork()) exit(0);
Is that too easy, or what?  I've made this change to cron, lpsched, and
errdemon on every machine I've run, and it helps a \lot/ in controlling
the machine usage.  It makes it very easy to do things like stopping and
starting daemons when going in and out of "single-user" mode (which is
what I use init level one for) or when shutting down the system (ditto init
level zero).

I've even sent in the idea to both Pyramid and AT&T; so far, they have
yet to act on it.  Perhaps if more people requested the change?
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo   Greg.Noel@SanDiego.NCR.COM  or  greg@ncr-sd