Arch Linux

Find more about bcron here http://untroubled.org/bcron/

How can it be, that bcron is more "modern" than fcron? Bcron's last update was 2005, fcron's 2007.

I've never consciously used bcron (aka it might have been the active cron on some system where I didn't change the cron daemon) and usually prefer fcron for all my boxes, especially for the not-always-running ones since fcron offers a lot of features to handle that case.

Of course fcron has the same "problem" of not handling /etc/cron*, but this can usually be worked around by a simple script which runs/imports/etc. the relevant files.


That being said, bcron still gets my vote over dcron. Al least it *has* a release date in it's homepage. It may also be the more sane coice over fcron which behaves rather differently than any of the other crons.

I'm for this :)

Aaron, don't forget you promised me eternal love-making if I get /etc/cron.d/* fixed :)

i don't know bcron.
but given it is at its 0.09 release and fcron at 3.0.4, i am more for fcron. given that the release number are meaningfull
fcron combine anacron's feature in it and there is no need to have another program to get the job done.

but if some big distro use it, then what can i say, go for it..., i will continue to use fcron anyway

I can only repeat my statement from  FS#12910 : fcron is the best :)

I don't mind either way if it makes /etc/cron.d work :)

are you aware of this yacron ?
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=78654

Can we resolve this now?

Sounds like this one is just in need of a decision. Anyone have a strong enough opinion to propose a course of action?

I guess I don't have enough problems with cron to warrant changing anything. But others probably do.

Aaron?

There are a lot of cron options, but I strongly disagree with using one that doesn't support the standard crontab syntax. There is no way I'm going to be using fcron in any system that others will access and have them at a loss for words for why their cron jobs don't work.</rant>
fcron is okay if that is what you want, but it should by no means be the default.

After further research, I recommend bcron as the new option.

Full rationale in mailing list thread:

http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2010-January/014781.html

On/after 1/10, I will package bcron in [extra], and if my longer tests confirm it's a suitable replacement, I will suggest to tpowa that it replace dcron in [core].

It seems dcron at least thinks it can do /etc/cron.d as of 3.1 (we're on 3.2). From the CHANGELOG file:

v3.1
Add support for root-run crontab files in /etc/cron.d and rewrite a
good chunk of the crontab file management code. By VMiklos and Matt
Dillon.

I'm mostly curious to see what effect this information has on the relationship between Aaron and Sven-Hendrik. :)