Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: Inotify and (f)crontabs

[Ryan Reich]

On 7/6/07, Steve Long <slong@××××××××××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> Ryan Reich wrote:
> <snip useful discussion that went over my head>
> >
> > If there's interest in incorporating this, I wouldn't mind testing my
> > idea.  Once I get past the initial resistance to doing anything at
> > all, it's probably two minutes' compilation time plus two more writing
> > the config files to set up.
> >
> I think I should point out that comments like that really get people's backs
> up; if it's so quick and easy why didn't you implement it first and then
> ask for comments on a working project? If you only wanted discussion then
> cool, you got it ;)
>
> Please do post a follow up with a link to the working code.
>
> (BTW my 5 minute projects always take weeks.. ;)

I don't know if I got anyone else's back up with this, but you got
mine up with your letter :)  So I wrote an ebuild for incron (though I
notice that there's an extremely minimal one pending on
bugs.gentoo.org).  It includes, in addition to the actual ebuild file,
a boot script, an incrontab similar to the one I conceptualized in one
of my earlier letters, and a little script that handles files in
/etc/cron.{hourly,...}.  I've tested it on my machine (indeed, I'm
running it now) and it does work.  Basically, the incrontab (called
"fcrontabs" and which goes in /etc/incron.d) runs my little script to
generate a one-line fcrontab which it puts in /etc/cron, whenever it
sees something change in one of the cron.timely directories; the
one-liner just runs the script which changed.  It also makes
check_system_crontabs the responsibility of incrond.  The net result
is that adding anything to any /etc/cron.timely/ results in a periodic
fcron job, like

@ 1d makewhatis -u

being added to the fcrontab for "systab" immediately.  The contents of
/etc/crontab and /etc/fcrontab are redundant under this scheme and the
files should be emptied if this is used.

I've tarred and bzipped the whole ebuild directory and attached it;
it's only four kilobytes so I hope no one minds (this letter is
probably longer).  I don't know where the correct forum to submit this
sort of thing for comment is, so if this isn't it I'd be happy to take
it somewhere else.  But I thought anyone following this discussion
would like to see it here.

-- 
Ryan Reich