[vox-tech] cron - not at a different time

[Samuel N. Merritt]

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On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 11:40:24AM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Wed 03 Mar 04, 11:28 AM, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us> sai=
d:
> > On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Ken Herron wrote:
> >=20
> > > --On Wednesday, March 03, 2004 10:11:10 -0800 Peter Jay Salzman=20
> > > <p@dirac.org> wrote:
> > >=20
> > > >> > 25 4 * * * root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report
> > > >> /etc/cron.daily
> > > >>
> > > >> That line will only launch "run-parts" if /usr/sbin/anacron doesn't
> > > >> exist. Does /usr/sbin/anacron exist?
> > > >
> > > > ken,
> > > >
> > > > yeah, it does exist.   daily definitely runs.  it just runs at a ti=
me i
> > > > wasn't expecting.
> > >=20
> > > My point was that if /usr/sbin/anacron exists, then the crontab line=
=20
> > > above will not run cron.daily. You say that /usr/sbin/anacron exists,=
 so=20
> > > cron.daily is not being launched as a result of the above crontab lin=
e.=20
> > > That means something else is running it. Something like anacron, for=
=20
> > > example.
> >=20
> > This list is great.  This explains a longstanding puzzle (to me) of how
> > (and to some extent why) both cron and anacron are installed on my debi=
an
> > box.
> >=20
> > Now that I see how it works, I am not too impressed with this kludge,
> > though... this is a deceptively obtuse configuration duplication between
> > these two packages.
>=20
> ok, maybe i'm slow, but i don't understand why that line will only
> launch if /usr/sbin/anacron doesn't exist.

The shell uses short-circuit evaluation on conditionals. When it sees=20
A || B
it first evaluates A. Then if A is true, the value of the whole
conditional has to be true, so B never even gets evaluated.=20

So, if "test -e /usr/sbin/anacron" is true because anacron is installed,
then the shell doesn't bother with "run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily"
because it has already figured out the value of the conditional.

On the other hand, if "test -e /usr/sbin/anacron" is false, then the
shell is looking at (false || "run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily"),
which evaluates to whatever the right-hand side evaluates to.=20
=20
> /etc/init.d/cron gets run upon startup.  the only test i see is:
>=20
>    test -f /usr/sbin/cron || exit 0
>=20
> it doesn't look look for /usr/sbin/anacron.  what am i missing?
>=20
> pete
>=20
> --=20
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Samuel Merritt
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