[arch-general] Replace dcron once again?

[Simon Stoakley]

The day was 07/11/10 23:58 when Heiko Baums had this to say......:

>> * The crontab from dcron and fcron are not compatible. So fcron cannot
>> be a simple drop-in repalcement
>
> What are the differences? I didn't need to change anything when I
> switched from fcron to the new dcron. If I had to change a bit it was
> so easy, that I can't remember anymore. The only thing which has
> changed was the command to edit the crontab. It's crontab for dcron and
> fcrontab for fcron. But for such changes an announcement can be written
> in the News section of the website, in the mailing list and in the
> package's post_install(). See the latest xorg upgrade.
>
> And Florian's suggestion was not about removing dcron from the repos,
> but only to change the default cron daemon, which is installed without
> the user's interaction during installation, from dcron to fcron. So only
> new installations would be affected by this change anyway.
>
>> * Some users might prefer dcron; simply replacing it is just not how
>> we roll. People are free to install fcron if they like.
>
> I personally haven't seen big differences between fcron and dcron from
> the administrator's point of view.
>
> Heiko
>

I've just switched to fcron, it's not a straight drop in AFAICT but not 
exactly hard.
   * crond needs changing to fcron in rc.conf DAEMONS
   * You'd need to backup/copy over your crontab from dcron over to 
fcron as it
      either overwrites the old on or uses one from a different location.
       (dcron syntax is working fine in fcron though)
   * crontab cmd is a little different (as the install msg tells you)

If (big if i know) the default cron is going to be swapped out, the only 
thing i would suggest is warning in advance so people can backup crontab.

+1 from me though for swapping, fcron looks a lot better/more versatile 
to me a humble user!

Simon