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From: soup@penrij.LS.COM (John Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: cron
Summary: Other "cron" misbehaviour
Message-ID: <85@penrij.LS.COM>
Date: 4 Feb 90 08:14:06 GMT
References: <2735@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> <269@pallas.UUCP>
Organization: penrij, Perkasie PA
Lines: 42

In article <269@pallas.UUCP>, kabra437@pallas.UUCP (Ken Abrams) writes:
> In article <2735@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> cs374107@umbc5.umbc.edu () writes:
> >
> >At my home system, cron is acting weird (SCO 386 Xenix), cron seems to be
> >activating once,ie my 'news' file in crontabs does not get executed but 
> >the first time I boot.  Any ideas as how to fix this? Thanks
> 
> Put the following in your crontabs:
> 1 * * * * /bin/true
> This will keep cron "awake".

	There is also another possibility, one which I tripped over (rather
	uncomfortably).

	For the longest time I liked using the /usr directory for users on
	the system, but I didn't want them in the root partition.
	Odd, yes, but I was young and still pretty thick (still am, come
	to think of it)...

	So I created another partition (XENIX 2.2+) and placed the /usr
	ptn out there, keeping a minimal copy on the root partions so
	I could boot.  This trick worked fine until SCO coughed up 2.3.

	Under 2.3, cron got started before the usr file system got mounted!
	This truly messed things up for me-  I was used to midnight polls
	at home and was no longer getting them.

	Well, after 2 weeks (couldn't spend full time checking) I finally
	realized (after pulling Sys V.3 source and replacing cron!) what
	my problem was.  I adjusted the sequence in /etc/rc.d to ensure
	that /etc/cron started AFTER the file systems were mounted.

	Please don't laugh-  Like Intel and MicroSoft, SCO keeps breaking
	things.  Of course, for SCO, a lot of this stuff _worked_ at one
	time.  After all, neither Intel nor MicroSoft have something
	working to avoid fixing.  (If it ain't broke, don't fix it).

	Otherwise not entirely displeased with SCO.

--
 John R. Campbell	...!uunet!lgnp1!penrij!soup	  (soup@penrij.LS.COM)
		 "In /dev/null no one can hear you scream"