Anacron is a computer program written by Sean Perry for the Unixoperating system. Anacron performs the periodic command scheduling function traditionally done by cron. Unlike cron, it does not assume that the system is running continuously. It can therefore be used to control the execution of daily, weekly, and monthly jobs (or anything with a period of n days), on systems that don't run 24 hours a day. // A computer program or software program (usually abbreviated to a program) is a step-by-step list of instructions written for a particular computer architecture in a particular computer programming language. ... Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that List of Unixes be merged into this article or section. ... Jump to: navigation, search In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ... Surname redirect crontab ...
Most Unix systems are set up to run "housekeeping chores" such as log-rotation, unused files deletion, indexing local files for the search engine, etc. With cron these tasks are, often, scheduled to be executed overnight or another low-usage time to avoid straining the system. If the system is turned off at the time a given task should have been run, it will not be executed for that iteration. Surname redirect crontab ...
On the contrary, Anacron will make sure that these commands are run at the specified intervals as closely as machine-uptime permits.
Anacron drawbacks
Anacron does not allow user to schedule tasks.
Only the system administrator can configure anacron.
Surname redirect crontab ... Jump to: navigation, search Paul Vixie is the author of several RFCs and well known UNIX system programs, among them SENDS, proxynet, rtty and Vixie cron. ... Surname redirect crontab ...
Anacron runs the periodic daily, weekly and monthly tasks on your Mac even if the machine (a laptop, for example) spends much of its time asleep or switched-off.
Anacron silently checks when you reboot and every sixty minutes while the computer is running to see if the various periodic scripts are overdue, and runs them if necessary.
The advantage of Anacron over many other solutions to this issue is that it runs as a proper Unix background process, requires no user intervention, and uses the regular periodic scripts, including local additions or modifications.
Feeds |
Contact