[arch-general] Comment on: Use systemd timers instead of /etc/cron.{hourly, daily, weekly, monthly}?

[Carl Schaefer]

> > Losing
> > the ability to control when jobs run is giving up a lot; without that,
> > the more use is made of systemd timers, the more unpredictable the
> > results will be.
> 
> See systemd.timer(5) manpage. The timer configuration _should be_ one-to-one
> equivalent to a crontab, except for a different syntax...

thanks, the description of the OnCalendar syntax is actually in
systemd.time(7), and I'd missed it.  It does look like an improvement
over the crontab file syntax in readability, at least.

> > > * service will be simpler than the rather long dropin scripts
> > > 
> Just compare {man-db,logrotate,updatedb}.service files with the corresponding
> scripts in cron.daily...

if there's a complex script in cron.daily, I'd expect the service file
would have to invoke a similar script to do the same work.

> > and missing from the "con" list is the point
> > Maciej raised about the effect random timer jobs can have on busy
> > servers.
> 
> The timer jobs are niced to 19 so if the server is busy they should wait, no?

that sounds like a reasonable assumption, but based on the problem
report it may not be true.

thanks!
Carl