Conversion

of BSD Crontab files.

 BSD 4.2     BSD 4.3  

📦  Backup

While Cron doesn't use  /usr/lib/crontab  config files anymore,
you should keep it or make a backup in case something goes south.

🪓  Separation

The main goal of the conversion is split your existing config
into smaller bite sized pieces that each fulfill a specific role.

The most significant feature of this Cron is the ability
to move news & uucp commands into files owned
and maintained by those users.

🛡  Super User

Please remove all the su commands from your config.

On BSD 4.3, there's no need for su since the username
appears in the command, however I would recommend
using separate Crontabs for separate environments.

🥇  Root

Most commands in your most CronTabs

Are run by Ｒｏｏｔ
Have to be run by Ｒｏｏｔ
Should continue be run by Ｒｏｏｔ

🏗  Structure

The recommended folder layout for your configs.

Copying

The  crontab  command copies all used configs
into a protected folder at  <CRONDIR>/SPOOL_DIR

This means that it generally doesn't matter where
you keep your configs, however choosing a good
location helps to keep things tidy.

Naming

It's recommended to name your config files

crontab.src

Type	Suggested Location
Root	/etc/crontab.src  or   /usr/adm/crontab.src
News	/usr/lib/news/crontab.src
UUCP	/usr/lib/uucp/crontab.src

📥  Installation

Install your configs with the  crontab  command,
probably with  -u <Username>  ( See man pages )

The  crontab  command can also be used
to examine, replace and delete a CronTab.

🎬  Examples

4.2

On this version your config might look like this

 5 * * * *  su uucp < /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.hr
10 4 * * *  su uucp < /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.day
15 5 * * 0  su uucp < /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.wk

Or this

 5 * * * *  echo /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.hr  | su uucp
10 4 * * *  echo /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.day | su uucp
15 5 * * 0  echo /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.wk  | su uucp

4.3

Here they might look a little bit better already

 5 * * * *  uucp /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.hr
10 4 * * *  uucp /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.day
15 5 * * 0  uucp /usr/lib/uucp/uudemon.wk

Converted

In the updated version you would want to create use a dedicated file like
/usr/lib/uucp/crontab.src  to put the  uucp  specific commands into.

It might look something like this:

# UUCP's Crontab
# at /usr/lib/uucp/crontab.src

SHELL = /bin/sh
PATH = /usr/lib/uucp:/bin:/usr/bin
HOME = /usr/lib/uucp

 5 * * * *  uudemon.hr
10 4 * * *  uudemon.day
15 5 * * 0  uudemon.wk

Alternative

If you run a  BSD 4.2  derived Cron, you can of course just
install your current CronTab in toto as the root's CronTab.

It would work exactly the way your current one does,
barring the additional steps in installing / changing it.

There would still be advantages to this Cron ,
mainly getting mail every time there is some
output from your Cron commands.

✉  Mail

It is likely you will find your commands to generate
a lot of output, after installing this version of Cron.

To mitigate this, you can redirect all expected
output to a per-execution log file, to only keep
the output from the last execution.

This way only unexpected output will be mailed to you.

This might take a while to get right, however once it
works, it will be very convenient and worth the effort.