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Re: updatedb.mlocate

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Greg Wooledge writes:

> On Sat, Apr 09, 2022 at 09:26:58PM -0600, Charles Curley wrote:
> > Two of my machines have their database files dated at midnight or one
> > minute after.
> >
> > Possibly because updatedb is run by a systemd timer, not cron.

[...]

> # skip in favour of systemd timer
> if [ -d /run/systemd/system ]; then
>     exit 0
> fi
> [...]
>
> Wow.  That's incredibly annoying!

It provides a mechanism that adjusts to the init system at runtime. Maybe  
there are better ways to do it, but it seems to work OK?

> unicorn:~$ less /lib/systemd/system/mlocate.timer
> [Unit]
> Description=Updates mlocate database every day
>
> [Timer]
> OnCalendar=daily
> AccuracySec=24h
> Persistent=true
>
> [Install]
> WantedBy=timers.target
>
> ... it doesn't even say when it runs?  What silliness is this?

Try

# systemctl list-timers
NEXT                         LEFT          LAST                         PASSED    UNIT                         ACTIVATES
Mon 2022-04-11 00:00:00 CEST 12h left      Sun 2022-04-10 00:00:01 CEST 11h ago   mlocate.timer                mlocate.service

It shows that at least on my system, it is going to run on 00:00 local time.

I can imagine that the idea behind not specifying the actual time in the  
individual unit allows you to configure the actual time of invocation  
somehwere else. This way if you have a lot of machines all online you can  
avoid having bursts of activity in the entire network/datacenter just as the  
clock turns to 00:00.

> Oh well.  It clearly isn't bothering me (I'm usually in bed before
> midnight, though not always), so I never had to look into it.  I'm sure
> someone felt it was a "good idea" to move things from perfectly normal
> and well-understood crontab files into this new systemd timer crap that
> nobody understands, and that I should respect their wisdom, but I don't
> see the advantages at this time.

I think systemd tries to provide an alternative for all the `...tab` files  
that used to be the standard (/etc/inittab, /etc/crontab, /etc/fstab come to  
mind). IMHO the notable advantage over the traditional method is that on  
systemd-systems one can query all the status information with a single  
command: `systemctl status <name-of-unit>`. Similarly, the lifecycle of  
start/stop/enable/disable can all be handled by the single command  
`systemctl start/stop/enable/disable <name-of-unit>`. All stdout/stderr  
outputs available via `journalctl -u <name-of-unit>`. In theory this could  
eliminate the need to know about or remember the individual services' log  
file names.

Specifically in the case of `cron`, I think it is an improvement that user- 
specific timers are now kept in the user's home directory  
(~/.config/systemd/user directory) rather than a system directory  
(/var/spool/cron/crontabs).

IMHO systemd's interface is not the best design-wise and in terms of its  
strange defaults, formats and names (paged output by default is one of the  
things I disable all the time, INI-derivatives are really not my favorite  
configuration syntax, binary logfiles, semantics of disable/mask can be  
confusing...). IMHO it does provide a lot of useful features that were  
missing previously, though.

YMMV
Linux-Fan

öö

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Thread

updatedb.mlocate "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-04-09 18:40 +0200
  Re: updatedb.mlocate Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2022-04-09 18:50 +0200
    Re: updatedb.mlocate Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2022-04-09 19:00 +0200
      Re: updatedb.mlocate "sp007@caiway.net" <sp007@caiway.net> - 2022-04-09 19:30 +0200
      Re: updatedb.mlocate Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2022-04-09 19:40 +0200
      Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-09 20:10 +0200
    Re: updatedb.mlocate "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-04-10 16:40 +0200
  Re: updatedb.mlocate Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2022-04-09 19:30 +0200
    Re: updatedb.mlocate "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-04-10 16:50 +0200
      Re: updatedb.mlocate David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-04-11 01:30 +0200
  Re: updatedb.mlocate gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2022-04-09 21:50 +0200
    Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-09 22:40 +0200
      Re: updatedb.mlocate gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2022-04-09 23:00 +0200
        Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-09 23:20 +0200
          Re: updatedb.mlocate "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> - 2022-04-10 17:00 +0200
        Re: updatedb.mlocate Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2022-04-10 05:30 +0200
          Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-10 06:00 +0200
            Re: updatedb.mlocate <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-04-10 08:10 +0200
            Re: updatedb.mlocate Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de> - 2022-04-10 11:40 +0200
              Re: updatedb.mlocate gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2022-04-10 12:10 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-10 16:40 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2022-04-10 16:50 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-10 18:10 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-04-10 20:50 +0200
              Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-10 16:10 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2022-04-10 22:40 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-04-11 01:30 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> - 2022-04-11 01:40 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2022-04-11 02:00 +0200
                Re: updatedb.mlocate David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> - 2022-04-11 02:20 +0200

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