Re: Package automation in /etc/daily

[Julio Merino <jmmv%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Steven Bellovin 
<smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost> wrote:
>
> Maybe the default cron entry should be prefixed with (for ksh)
>
>        sleep $((RANDOM%30))
>
> or some such.  (I'm 100% serious about a random delay, though I'd most likely 
> suggest building it in to the fetch command or script, activated by an option 
> used by the cron invocation.  If we really wanted to be kinky, we could make 
> the option only active if the program were running without a control tty, 
> i.e., from cron instead of by the administrator.  That's worth serious 
> consideration, given how often some people (including me) just cut-and-paste 
> such things from the cron job, since I do it manually seldom enough that the 
> proper flags aren't in my personal cache...

The new checks I added are at the bottom of the daily script.  All the
checks that run before are slow, including a full scan of the hard
disk, so they will introduce such 30-second variability anyway.

-- 
Julio Merino