Re: [PATCH] maintenance: use systemd timers on Linux

On Sun, May 2, 2021 at 1:28 AM Bagas Sanjaya [off-list ref] wrote:

On 01/05/21 21.52, Lénaïc Huard wrote:

quoted

The existing mechanism for scheduling background maintenance is done
through cron. On Linux systems managed by systemd, systemd provides an
alternative to schedule recurring tasks: systemd timers.

The main motivations to implement systemd timers in addition to cron
are:
* cron is optional and Linux systems running systemd might not have it
   installed.

Supposed that I have Linux box with systemd and classical cron. Should
systemd timers be preferred over cron?

The implementation in this patch unconditionally prefers `systemd`
over `cron`. Whether that's a good idea is subject to question (as
both brian and I mentioned in our reviews).

Nevertheless, because we are dealing with external dependency (systemd), it
should makes sense to enforce this dependency requirement when user choose to use
systemd timers so that users on non-systemd boxes (such as Gentoo with OpenRC)
don't see errors that forcing them to use systemd.

If you scan through the patch itself, you will find that it is careful
to choose the appropriate scheduler and not to spit out errors when
one or the other scheduler is unavailable.