keeping up to date with cron

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Feb 03), Dan Rue said:
> I am somewhat new to the FreeBSD stuff.  After getting used to the
> cvsup way of life, I added this to my crontab:
> 
> # Package database maintaince
> 25      2       *       *       *       root    /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g -L 2 /root/cvsup/ports-supfile && /usr/local/sbin /portsdb -uU
> 0       1       *       *       6       root    /usr/local/sbin/pkgdb -aF
>  
> # Should probably do this manually from time to time
> #0      4       *       *       6       root /usr/local/sbin/portupgrade -aRy
> 
> Note that I don't actually run portupgrade from cron anymore.  Any
> suggestions on better flags or ways of doing any of these tasks? 
> What do you all have in your crons?  Note that this is a desktop
> system, not a production server.  But what if it was a production
> server?  Shuold I do anything differently?

Since I cvsup the raw repo, I have an extra "cvs update" step, but
apart from that, I do basically the same thing.  I also run
"pkg_version -vL =" and "cd /usr/ports ; ls -ltrd */*/work" as part of
the cron job so I can see which of my installed ports need updating,
and whether I have any leftover work directories.  I don't portupgrade
automatically because of the churn in all the gnome packages, and some
ports may want to ask questions during the install, or may change their
behaviour.  Daemons migrating their startup scripts to the rc.subr
format, for example, won't start until you add their knob to
/etc/rc.conf.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com