[Linux-disciples] Re: Cron <root@JeffTweedy> test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly (fwd)

[Dylan Thurston]

On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 09:39:35AM -0500, Adam Kessel wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 09:17:56AM -0500, Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> > Very sorry: the proper response is to install scrollkeeper.
> > I'm not clear on why there was a monthly cron job for
> > scrollkeeper if I didn't have it installed, but alas.
> 
> Yes, right. I'm surprised you didn't have scrollkeeper installed; I
> thought it was a dependency for many gnome packages.
> 
> The reason this happens is that the cron job was probably classified as a
> configuration file and thus was not purged when, at some point, you
> uninstalled scrollkeeper (or more likely scrollkeeper was forced out by a
> conflict).  Unless you apt-get --purge remove things, the configuration
> files stay.  Sometimes this creates bad results, such as this example.  I
> don't think the Debian structure has a good solution for this at present.

The usual solution is to make the cron jobs exit immediately when the
package is not installed.  But in this case, that would have made
Steve not notice he was missing a package...

Peace,
	Dylan
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