On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 08:21:30PM +0200, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 12:02:34AM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > 
> > 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 ...
> 
> The standard output and errors of cron jobs is mailed to the owner of the
> cron tab. I'm not sure what periodic can do more in this area.

It just saves you from getting multiple messages.  Putting a
script in /etc/periodic/monthly is exactly the same as adding
that script onto/into /etc/monthly.local.  In fact, FreeBSD still
has /etc/monthly.local, which is run by /etc/monthly/999.local.

Part of the "adding and removing scripts from directories is
easier for the package management system than sed scripts"
theory, I suspect.

Cheers,

-- 
Andrew