The point of using periodic, at least under FreeBSD, is that there is a 
'report' that is issued at the end of the monthly periodic run letting the 
admin know the status of various things on their servers ...

So, for instance, it would give them a monthly reminder that the script *is* 
running on their machine ...

--On Sunday, October 01, 2006 22:51:35 -0400 matthew sporleder 
<msporleder@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/1/06, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>
>> Can someone that has installed BSDstats on your server please email me
>> instructions on *how* to install it for your flavor of BSD?  I do not believe
>> that either OpenBSD or NetBSD has a 'periodic' system similar to FreeBSDs,
>> and would like to put something up on the site explaining how to install
>> such that it runs once a month, specific to each flavors recommended method
>> ...
>>
>
>
> Wouldn't cron be best suited for this task?  That would seem pretty
> logical for running a shell script on a timed basis.  It's also quite
> portable.  I read the man page for periodic, but the usefulness of it
> seems quite mysterious to me.  ;)
> From crontab(5):
>           @monthly        Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *".
>
>  (personally, I like the 0 0 1 * * method)
> _Matt



----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664