cron(8) improvement

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 10 Nov 2013, Daniel O'Connor wrote:

>
> On 10 Nov 2013, at 24:24, Matthew Seaman <matthew at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>
>>   2) Should ports / packages populate these cron.d directories?
>>
>>       This is a much more interesting question.  Effectively its asking
>>       if a port / package should provide some level of automatic
>>       configuration -- a thing that has previously been a no-no for
>>       FreeBSD.
>
> I think it would be OK if they installed entries in a disabled state.

That would be my preference also.

> ie either the file is named such that it is ignored by cron (preferable IMO) or the entries in them are commented out.

Why not just use an additional entry in rc.conf?

rsnapshot_cron="YES"

(If there is a /usr/local/etc/cron.d/rsnapshot, add it to cron on
start/restart.)

This brings up another problem.  When a port is removed, what is done 
with ports cron entries that have been user modified?  Normally, 
modified files would not be removed, but a cron entry for a removed port 
definitely should not be running any more, even if the admin forgot to 
remove the entry in rc.conf.  But just removing the modified file is bad 
also, because maybe the port was just removed as part of an upgrade.