README 3.3 KB

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  1. GNU mcron --- README -*-text-*-
  2. Copyright (C) 2003, 2005, 2006, 2012, 2014 Dale Mellor
  3. Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
  4. are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
  5. notice and this notice are preserved.
  6. This is version 1.0.8 of the GNU mcron program. It is designed and written by
  7. Dale Mellor, and replaces and hugely enhances Vixie cron. It is functionally
  8. complete, production quality code (did you expect less?), but has not received
  9. much testing yet. It has only been built on a GNU/Linux system, and will most
  10. likely fail on others (but you never know...).
  11. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  12. IMPORTANT NOTICES
  13. Do not (yet) install this software on a machine which relies for its
  14. functioning on its current set of crontabs.
  15. For use as a replacement cron daemon on a system, the package must be installed
  16. by root.
  17. Before installing this package for the first time, it is necessary to terminate
  18. any running cron daemons on your system. If your old cron is not Vixie or
  19. accurately Vixie compatible (files in /var/cron/tabs*, /var/cron/allow,
  20. /var/cron/deny, /etc/crontab, /var/run/cron.pid) then you will need to clear out
  21. all old crontabs and make new ones afresh - or else look very carefully at the
  22. options you pass to the package configure script, as follows.
  23. It is often the case that GNU/Linux distributions and other Unices hacked the
  24. cron daemon to use different directories to those above. You can use configure
  25. options --spool-dir, --socket-file, --allow-file, --deny-file, --pid-file and
  26. --tmp-dir to make mcron behave similarly. Note that, with the exception of
  27. tmp-dir, none of these files or directories should be accessible by ordinary
  28. (non-root) users.
  29. If your old cron is Vixie, or very similar, mcron should fall right into place
  30. where your old cron was (the binaries cron and crontab will be replaced, but if
  31. your existing system has a binary called crond, you should make this a link
  32. to mcron), and you should be able to continue to use your existing crontabs
  33. without noticing any changes.
  34. If you don't want to clobber your existing cron executables, you can specify
  35. the --program-prefix option to configure with a prefix ending in a
  36. non-alphabetic character, for example "m.", and then run the programs as
  37. m.mcron, m.cron (or m.crond) and m.crontab.
  38. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  39. See the file INSTALL for generic building and installation instructions.
  40. After compilation, read the info file for full instructions for use (typing
  41. 'info -f doc/mcron.info' at the command line should suffice). Notes for end
  42. users, sysadmins, and developers who wish to incorporate mcron into their own
  43. programs are included here.
  44. Features which might be implemented sometime sooner or later are noted in the
  45. TODO file.
  46. Please send all other bug reports to bug-mcron@gnu.org. Other mailing lists you
  47. could subscribe to are help-mcron@gnu.org (for help and advice from the
  48. community, including the author) and info-mcron@gnu.org (for news as it
  49. happens).
  50. Mcron is free software. See the file COPYING for copying conditions.
  51. The mcron development home page is at http://www.gnu.org/software/mcron, and it
  52. can be obtained from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/mcron.