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Cron has given me a ton of headaches. Between skipped jobs on reboots and DST, inability to properly express some dates ("First Sunday of the Month" is a common

Cron has given me a ton of headaches. Between skipped jobs on reboots and DST, inability to properly express some dates ("First Sunday of the Month" is a common one), and worst of all, complete inability to prevent the same job from running multiple times at once, it's been regular headaches for a shop who has leaned very heavily on it. Some cron daemons handle some of these things, but they're not standard, and AIX's cron daemon definitely doesn't have these features. Every job has to be wrapped in a bespoke script to manage things that systemd already does, but much worse. systemd has given me many headaches, but as a whole, it has saved me far fewer headaches than it has given me.

egorfine 1y ago
> skipped jobs on reboots and DST > prevent the same job from running multiple times I'd say these are not bugs but rather a matter of realizing how cron works - just like with systemd-anything. So if you know DST is coming, a wise thing would be to not plan jobs in the rollover window. But yes, I agree that this thing is rudimentary - and thus simple - and thus reliable and independent, like the rest of unix was supposed to be. > job has to be wrapped in a bespoke script Well yes. Again, this is by design and well known. > systemd has given me many headaches, but as a whole, it has saved me far fewer headaches than it has given me Good for you - and I mean it! For me systemd was an obnoxious piece of shit which I have avoided for many years until Ubuntu decided that it's LP who's now in charge of what Unix is and at that point I had to submit. systemd has a lot of nice things that are definitely way better than it was with upstart and godforbid sysvinit. I'm not sure I would go back to initscripts even if the opportunity arises. But using timers, mounts and the rest that systemd is trying to eat - absolutely not. Absolutely fuck the systemd crowd and the way they treat people.
- Sammi 1y ago
  You're suggesting solutions to problems with cron that systemd just doesn't have. You can just _not_ have these problems.
  - egorfine 1y ago
    Replace the well-known solutions to cron deficiencies with a single huge problem called systemd? Of course. I don't have a choice because that's what has been shoved down our throats.

egorfine 1y ago

> skipped jobs on reboots and DST > prevent the same job from running multiple times I'd say these are not bugs but rather a matter of realizing how cron works - just like with systemd-anything. So if you know DST is coming, a wise thing would be to not plan jobs in the rollover window. But yes, I agree that this thing is rudimentary - and thus simple - and thus reliable and independent, like the rest of unix was supposed to be. > job has to be wrapped in a bespoke script Well yes. Again, this is by design and well known. > systemd has given me many headaches, but as a whole, it has saved me far fewer headaches than it has given me Good for you - and I mean it! For me systemd was an obnoxious piece of shit which I have avoided for many years until Ubuntu decided that it's LP who's now in charge of what Unix is and at that point I had to submit. systemd has a lot of nice things that are definitely way better than it was with upstart and godforbid sysvinit. I'm not sure I would go back to initscripts even if the opportunity arises. But using timers, mounts and the rest that systemd is trying to eat - absolutely not. Absolutely fuck the systemd crowd and the way they treat people.

Sammi 1y ago
You're suggesting solutions to problems with cron that systemd just doesn't have. You can just _not_ have these problems.
- egorfine 1y ago
  Replace the well-known solutions to cron deficiencies with a single huge problem called systemd? Of course. I don't have a choice because that's what has been shoved down our throats.