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

[Maciej Puzio]

I have been testing the issue for a week. Daily timers are fired
between 0:00 and 0:01 without exception - all timers at the same time,
all machines at the same time, every day at the same time. The largest
variation I have seen was 30 seconds. So yes, there is definitely an
issue with AccuracySec=12h not being honored.

However, whether timer accuracy is 30 seconds or 12 hours, this makes
little difference to me, as both are unacceptable without the
possibility to customize timer elapse time. I have reverted all my
Arch machines to previous cron-based config and intend to keep it this
way. Perhaps it is not "cool", but at least it works.

Which brings me to what I consider the most important problem here.
Having read the original thread on arch-dev-public I was left with an
impression that perceived "coolness" of the new setup took precedence
over consideration of its impact. As a result, modification has been
released without sufficient testing, as we can clearly see now. It did
not help that discussion was carried on a mailing list that does not
allow user comments. Perhaps a larger audience would have allowed a
consideration of alternative solutions. An example of such a solution
would be hourly/daily/monthly/weekly timers that execute scripts from
relevant /etc/cron.* directories. That would allow for removal of
cronie while sidestepping timer elapse problems that we are discussing
here. It would also have a benefit of handling all cron tasks in
addition to logrotate/updatedb/man-db/shadow.

Thanks
Maciej Puzio