undefined | Better HN

0 pointsphpisthebest3y ago0 comments

>>Sure, a single crontab makes it hard for packages to schedule things and makes it hard to assign ownership to individual packages/people/whatever.

and makes is hard for admins to schedule things, and make is hard to figure out what is scheduled when, and makes it hard to test if the process will work under the schedule.

I absolutely hate cron's format, and pretty much everything else about it. systemd timers is a WONDERFUL and absolutely needed change to the world of linux administration.

cron was written in a time where verbosity had actual costs to the system, we are not in those times and the need for nostalgia to be cryptic and only use minimum chars is over and I for one am glad for it.

Both in programming and administration people need to be MORE VERBOSE not less

0 comments

traverseda3y ago

Well I'm not complaining about systemd's verbosity here, I generally agree on that point. Nor am I saying cron is particularly good, I think there's definitely room for improvement.

What I am saying is that splitting a basic timer between two different files is really bad for readability and understandability.

phpisthebestOP3y ago

You are not splitting a timer between 2 files

you are splitting a service and a timer, not all services need a timer. I think that is point being glossed over

services may be called by a target, a timer, or manually. or all 3 when the need arises.

So for example if I have a process that I need to run on startup, every Friday, and sometimes adhoc I can create a single service file and do all 3, and know it is executed in the same way every time

could not do that with cron or even older init systems

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse