[mythtv-users] crontab vs. anacron from a mythtv perspective

[Jim Abernathy]

Not a problem, but a discussion. In working with Stephen Worthington on 
figuring out why database maintenance task changed their runtime after 
switching to Ubuntu 18.04, I got to thinking.

Yes, I know that me thinking is always dangerous, but here goes.

1.  There must be some reason that the Ubuntu folks set the anacron 
daily stuff to run just after midnight. Not sure if I change it back to 
7:35, as in Ubuntu 16.04, if that fixes my problem but breaks theirs. Or 
will break it in the near future.

2.  Manually editing /etc/crontab is frowned on and your changes can get 
overwritten by a system upgrade.

3.  The conclusion I've reached is that if I setup my specific 
maintenance jobs use 'sudo crontab -e' then my maintenance jobs will 
continue to run correctly after a system upgrade. Apparently, 'crontab 
-e' creates/edits each users individual crontab and leaves the system 
crontab alone.

I found a good explanation at: 
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-schedule-routine-tasks-with-cron-and-anacron-on-a-vps

Now of course, my solution only works on backend's that always run and 
never sleep.

Thought?

Jim A