# periodic and cron doubt



## fluca1978 (Nov 3, 2011)

Hi,
I'm not sure what the real purpose of periodic is. Periodic is launched via cron, and it seems to me works only as a "container" for a set of script that can be managed via a single cron line. But I guess there is something more than reduce typing in crontab, maybe a specific environment settings? What is the added value of periodic to cron?


----------



## mix_room (Nov 3, 2011)

On my machines the outputs of all periodic jobs are collated into one nice email. 

I get one daily status mail per machine, one security, one weekly, one monthly. 
Instead of getting a number of cron-emails. 

I like it.


----------



## phoenix (Nov 4, 2011)

Periodic scripts are run on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  These are "cron" jobs that do a bunch of administrative tasks.  All of the periodic scripts are configured via a single config file /etc/periodic.conf with defaults pre-set in /etc/defaults/periodic.conf.  You can pick and choose which periodic scripts are run, and when.

Think of periodic like a set of canned cron jobs that can give you all kinds of insight into how your system is working, with nicely formatted, easy-to-read combined e-mail messages (one per periodic run).

It provides a nice separation, IMO, between user tasks (user crontabs), system tasks (/etc/crontab), and system administrivia tasks (periodic).

Just imagine the mess if that would be /etc/crontab if each and every single periodic script was listed in there, with comments about what they do, most commented out.


----------



## fluca1978 (Nov 4, 2011)

phoenix said:
			
		

> It provides a nice separation, IMO, between user tasks (user crontabs), system tasks (/etc/crontab), and system administrivia tasks (periodic).
> 
> Just imagine the mess if that would be /etc/crontab if each and every single periodic script was listed in there, with comments about what they do, most commented out.



Thanks, in fact it is a mess on systems that do not present this type of scheduling (I mean the crontab is really messed up).


----------



## fluca1978 (Nov 11, 2011)

Sorry to pick up again this thread, but I'm curious: is there a particular difference between period and (ana)cron daily/weekly run parts?


----------



## SirDice (Nov 11, 2011)

fluca1978 said:
			
		

> is there a particular difference between period and (ana)cron daily/weekly run parts?


If you mean like the anacron from Red Hat then no,there isn't really a difference. 

It may have been implemented differently but the results are the same. It runs one or more scripts on a daily, weekly and/or monthly basis.


----------

