Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 04-08-2006 Installation Manual page 423

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 scipts at custom times, re-
move the time stamp files regulary 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 22.2 /etc/crontab: Remove Time Stamp Files
59 * * * * root
14 2 * * * root
29 2 * * 6 root
44 2 1 * * root
The daily system maintenance jobs have been distributed to various scripts for reasons
of clarity. They are contained in the package aaa_base. /etc/cron.daily con-
tains, for example, the components suse.de-backup-rpmdb, suse
.de-clean-tmp, or suse.de-cron-local.
22.1.3 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. SUSE® Linux
Enterprise ensures that programs that produce log files install individual configation
files in /etc/logrotate.d. For example, such programs come with the packages
apache2 (/etc/logrotate.d/apache2) and syslogd (/etc/logrotate
.d/syslog).
(page 423), 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
Special Features of SUSE Linux Enterprise
Example 22.2,
423