[LUNA] (ana)cron question

[Paul F. Pearson]

----- Original Message -----
> On 08/06/15 11:56, Paul F. Pearson wrote:
> > On RHEL systems, /etc/anacrontab contains entries to run scripts in
> > /etc/cron.daily/, /etc/cron.weekly/ and /etc/cron.monthly:
> >
> > #  cat /etc/anacrontab
> > # /etc/anacrontab: configuration file for anacron
> >
> > # See anacron(8) and anacrontab(5) for details.
> >
> > SHELL=/bin/sh
> > PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
> > MAILTO=root
> > # the maximal random delay added to the base delay of the jobs
> > RANDOM_DELAY=45
> > # the jobs will be started during the following hours only
> > START_HOURS_RANGE=3-22
> >
> > #period in days   delay in minutes   job-identifier   command
> > 1	5	cron.daily		nice run-parts /etc/cron.daily
> > 7	25	cron.weekly		nice run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
> > @monthly 45	cron.monthly		nice run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
> >
> >
> > For reference:
> > http://serverfault.com/questions/135906/when-does-cron-daily-run
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >>
> >> I have several boxen on my LAN, all running some form of linux or *BSD.
> >> I want some of them to backup configuration files and/or /etc and/or the
> >> whole root fs for themselves & other LAN boxen periodically, probably
> >> weekly. I read the man page on my FC14-x86_64 box (soon to be upgraded
> >> to CentOS-6, so don't start ;-) ) & have a question. It looks like I
> >> want root to do the backing up so as to have access to all the stuff
> >> under /etc or /. That box uses anacron to take care of that for the
> >> system. I want to add to what it is doing, in a fashion which doesn't
> >> interfere w/ system operations & gets preserved across OS upgrades. I
> >> kinda expected some sort of crontab.local (following rc.local), but no
> >> such capability seems to exist. How do I go about scheduling these
> >> backups for the various machines which will be doing the backing-up,
> >> starting w/ the linux box ? I am planning to schedule rsync's to do the
> >> actual backing up, I just need to figure out how to interleave that job
> >> w/ other stuff the OS is doing on its own, w/o interfering w/ whatever
> >> else is going on. TIA for any pointers & have a good one.
> >>
> 
> Hmmmmm .... OK, so what do I do, add scripts to the various /etc/[d,w,m]
> directories ? Do they get wiped out in upgrades ? That's basically what
> I was asking about ....

I don't have experience with a full upgrade, but I *suppose* that the /etc/cron.{d,w,m}* directories remain essentially untouched during an upgrade. My feel of the RHEL philosophy is that user stuff outside of a system define directory pretty much stays untouched.  

Take my suppositions and feelings with grains of salt.