3 Copyright 2000-2013 Thibault Godouet <fcron@free.fr>
4 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
5 document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
6 Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
8 A copy of the license is included in gfdl.sgml.
13 <title>About fcron</title>
15 <title>What is fcron?</title>
16 <para>&Fcron; is a scheduler. It aims at replacing <application>Vixie
17 Cron</application>, so it implements most of its functionalities.</para>
18 <para>But contrary to <application>Vixie Cron</application>, &fcron;
19 does not need your system to be up 7 days a week, 24 hours a day: it also works
20 well with systems which are not running neither all the time nor regularly
21 (contrary to <application>anacrontab</application>).</para>
22 <para>In other words, &fcron; does both the job of <application>Vixie
23 Cron</application> and <application>anacron</application>, but does even more
24 and better :)) ...</para>
26 <para>To do so, &fcron; allows you to use the standard mode in which you
27 tell it to execute one command at a given date and hour and to make it run a
28 command according to its time of execution, which is normally the same as system
32 <para>Run the task 'save /home/ directory' every 3h15 of system
34 </blockquote> and, of course, in order to make it really useful, the
35 time remaining until next execution is saved each time the system is stopped.
39 <para>run that command once between 2am and 5am</para>
40 </blockquote> which will be done if the system is running at any
41 time in this interval.</para>
43 <para>&Fcron; also includes a useful system of options, which can be
44 applied either to every lines following the declaration or to a single line.
45 Some of the supported options permit to:
47 <listitem><para>run jobs one by one (fcrontab option
48 &optserial;),</para></listitem>
49 <listitem><para>set the max system load average value under
50 which the job should be run (fcrontab option &optlavg;),</para></listitem>
51 <listitem><para>set a nice value for a job (fcrontab option
52 &optnice;),</para></listitem>
53 <listitem><para>run jobs at &fcron;'s startup if they should
54 have been run during system down time (fcrontab option
55 &optbootrun;),</para></listitem>
56 <listitem><para>mail user to tell him a job has not run and why
57 (fcrontab option &optnoticenotrun;),</para></listitem>
58 <listitem><para>a better management of the mailing of outputs
65 <title>License</title>
66 <para>&Fcron; is distributed under GPL license (please read the license
67 in the <link linkend="gpl">gpl</link> file).</para>
71 <title>Requirements</title>
74 <para>a <productname>Linux/Unix system</productname></para>
75 <para>&Fcron; should work on every
76 <productname>POSIX</productname> system, but it has been developed on
77 <productname>Mandrake</productname> Linux (so it should work without any
78 problems on <productname>Redhat</productname>).</para>
79 <para>Fcron has been reported to work correctly on:
82 <listitem><para><productname>Linux Mandrake</productname>
84 <listitem><para><productname>Linux Debian 3.0</productname>
86 <listitem><para><productname>LFS</productname></para>
87 <para>(take a look at the <ulink
88 url="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/">Beyond
89 LFS book</ulink> to find the installation
92 <listitem><para><productname>FreeBSD 4.2</productname>
94 <listitem><para><productname>OpenBSD 2.8</productname>
96 <listitem><para><productname>NetBSD 2.0</productname>
99 <para><productname>Darwin/MacOS-X</productname></para>
101 <listitem><para><productname>Solaris 8</productname>
103 <listitem><para><productname>AIX 4.3.3</productname>
105 <listitem><para><productname>HP-UX 11.11</productname>
108 <para>but fcron should work on other OS as well. Yet,
110 making it work on a <productname>POSIX</productname> system, please
111 contact me at &email;.</para>
113 <listitem><para>a running <application>syslog</application> (or you
114 won't have any log)</para></listitem>
115 <listitem><para>a running mail system (
116 <application>sendmail</application> or <application>postfix</application> for
117 example) (or users will not able to read their jobs output)
119 <listitem><para>(optional) a <productname>PAM</productname>
120 library.</para></listitem>
121 <listitem><para>(optional) a system with a working <productname>SE Linux</productname> environment.</para></listitem>
126 <title>Compilation and installation</title>
127 <para>See the <link linkend="install">install</link> file (either install.txt
128 or install.html).</para>
132 <title>Configuration</title>
133 <para>See the <link linkend="fcron.8">&fcron;(8)</link>, <link
134 linkend="fcrontab.5">&fcrontab;(5)</link> and <link
135 linkend="fcrontab.1">&fcrontab;(1)</link> manpages.</para>
139 <title>Bug reports, corrections, propositions...</title>
140 <para>Please send me the description of any bug you happen to encounter
141 (with, even better, the corresponding patch -:) and any propositions,
142 congratulations or flames at &email;</para>
143 <para>Please contact Russell Coker directly for problems about SE Linux support at &selinuxemail;, since he maintains this part of the code.</para>
147 <!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
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