Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 10 SP2 - DEPLOYMENT GUIDE 08-05-2008 Deployment Manual page 443

run-crons is run every 15 minutes from the main table (/etc/crontab). This
guarantees that processes that may have been neglected can be run at the proper time.
To run the hourly, daily, or other periodic maintenance scripts at custom times,
remove the time stamp files regularly using /etc/crontab entries (see
"/etc/crontab: Remove Time Stamp Files"
before every full hour, the daily one once a day at 2:14 a.m., etc.).
Example 19.2 /etc/crontab: Remove Time Stamp Files
59 * * * * root
14 2 * * * root
29 2 * * 6 root
44 2 1 * * root
Alternatively, set DAILY_TIME in /etc/sysconfig/cron to the time at which
cron.daily should start. The setting of MAX_NOT_RUN ensures that the daily jobs
get triggered to run, even if the user did not turn on the computer at the specified
DAILY_TIME for a longer period of time. The maximum value of MAX_NOT_RUN is
14 days.
The daily system maintenance jobs are distributed to various scripts for reasons of
clarity. They are contained in the package aaa_base. /etc/cron.daily contains,
for example, the components suse.de-backup-rpmdb, suse.de-clean-tmp,
or suse.de-cron-local.
19.1.3 Log Files: Package logrotate
There are a number of system services (daemons) that, along with the kernel itself,
regularly record the system status and specific events to log files. This way, the admin-
istrator can regularly check the status of the system at a certain point in time, recognize
errors or faulty functions, and troubleshoot them with pinpoint precision. These log
files are normally stored in /var/log as specified by FHS and grow on a daily basis.
The logrotate package helps control the growth of these files.
Configure logrotate with the file /etc/logrotate.conf. In particular, the
include specification primarily configures the additional files to read. Programs that
produce log files install individual configuration files in /etc/logrotate.d. For
example, such files ship with the packages, e.g. apache2 (/etc/logrotate.d/
apache2) and syslogd (/etc/logrotate.d/syslog).
(page 427), which removes the hourly one
rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.hourly
rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.daily
rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.weekly
rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.monthly
Example 19.2,
Special System Features 427