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Backup-Jobs: anacron vs. cron
cron
cron schedules execution of commands for certain time as given in crontab. But: If your DNS 323 is switched off meanwhile, execution is simply missed.
anacron
anacron makes sure that commands as given in /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}/ are executed exactly once in the apropriate period of time if system-uptime allows. As long as your NAS does not run 24h/day, anacron this is what you need to trigger f.e. daily/weekly/monthly rotating rsnapshot-backups of a local NAS-Path or from remote resources like your PC or Notebook using a rsync-daemon installed there or a ssh-connection!
anacronism : alternative to anacron
Unfortunately there does not seem to be a suitable anacron-package (please correct me if this is not true). As a workaround you might use the shellscript anacronism which comes from the mythtv-community.(Thanks Marc !)
#!/ffp/bin/sh # set PATH to be run by crontab PATH=/ffp/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/ffp/bin:/usr/bin:/bin ; export PATH # nix /bin/bash # # $1: Path to cron directories. Default is "/etc/cron", which results in # processing all files in /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.weekly and # /etc/cron.monthly. # # $2: If the keyword is "reset", then all memory of when the last job # was run is erased and no other action is taken. # # http://mythtv.mlaronson.com/home/anacron # # anacron-ersatz: sorgt dafür, dass die scripts in cron.{daily/weekly/monthly} # nicht mehr als einmal in der jeweiligen periode ausgeführt werden # myname=$(basename $0) logdir=/ffp/var/log cache_dir=/ffp/var/cache/$myname # if [ "$1" == "" ]; then indir=/ffp/etc/cron else indir="$1" fi log=$logdir/$myname.log lastrun_filebase=$cache_dir/lastrun_$(echo "$indir" | sed -e "s@/@_@g") days_since_epoch () { expr `date +"%s"` / 3600 / 24 return 0 } # Initialize # if [ "$USER" != "root" ]; then echo "$myname must be run as root" exit 1 fi if [ ! -d "$logdir" ]; then mkdir -p "$logdir"; fi if [ ! -d "$cache_dir" ]; then mkdir -p "$cache_dir"; fi if [ ! -d $logdir ] || [ ! -w $logdir ]; then echo $0: Error, unable to create writing log directory named $logdir exit 1 fi if [ ! -d $cache_dir ] || [ ! -w $cache_dir ]; then echo $0: Error, unable to create writing log directory named $cache_dir exit 1 fi # # Keep log sizes down # if [ -e $log ]; then ## fsize=$( du --apparent-size -s "$log" | awk '{ print $1 }' ) fsize=$( du -s "$log" | awk '{ print $1 }' ) if [ $fsize -gt 50 ]; then echo "$myname: Log file size of $fsize KB cycled `date`." >> $log mv -f $log $log.-1 fi fi # # Main # if [ "$2" == "reset" ]; then echo "Resetting memory of when last run was made for $indir" rm -f $lastrun_filebase.daily $lastrun_filebase.weekly \ $lastrun_filebase.monthly exit 0 fi current_day=$( days_since_epoch ) echo "$myname: $indir on `date`, day number $current_day." >> $log for line in "daily 1" "weekly 7" "monthly 30"; do unit_name=$(echo "$line" | cut -d" " -f1) unit_duration=$(echo "$line" | cut -d" " -f2) lastrun_file="$lastrun_filebase.$unit_name" if [ ! -d "$indir.$unit_name" ]; then echo " Skipping $unit_name for $indir; $indir.$unit_name does not exist." continue fi if [ ! -e $lastrun_file ]; then lastrun_day=0 else lastrun_day=$(cat $lastrun_file) fi nextrun_day=$( expr $lastrun_day + $unit_duration ) echo " Last $unit_name run was on" \ "day $lastrun_day; next is on day $nextrun_day" >> $log if [ $nextrun_day -le $current_day ] && [ -d "$indir.$unit_name" ]; then # # Run the jobs # echo " Running $unit_name jobs on day $current_day." >> $log #/usr/sbin/run-cron $indir.$unit_name 2>&1 \ /ffp/bin/run-parts $indir.$unit_name 2>&1 \ | sed -e "s/^/ /" >> $log echo $current_day > $lastrun_file fi done echo "" >> $log echo "" >> $log exit 0