Posted by Michael Sims on 01/17/05 17:58

Erwin Kerk wrote:
> The CRON daemon only refreshes it's job list after a job in the
> current list is completed. Therefore, the CRON daemon won't notice the
> "every-minute" job until 3.01 pm.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying above. Can you provide a pointer to
documentation about this? The man page for Vixie cron states in part:

"Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its spool directory's modtime (or
the modtime on /etc/crontab) has changed, and if it has, cron will then examine
the modtime on all crontabs and reload those which have changed. Thus cron need not
be restarted whenever a crontab file is modified."

Vixie cron, at least, refreshes it's job list anytime a crontab is changed, and
keeps that job list until the next change is made. Jobs should run according to
their way they are scheduled, and shouldn't be affected by the order they are listed
in the crontab or when other jobs are completed.

Perhaps I'm not understanding what you're saying (if so, my apologies) or perhaps
you are using a different flavor of cron that behaves differently. I really only
have experience with Vixie cron, but I thought they all pretty much behaved the same
way...

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