Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION 11-05-2007 Installation Manual page 427

execution is controlled by /usr/lib/cron/run-crons. /usr/lib/cron/
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 21.2 /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.
21.1.3 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 409), 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 21.2,
Special System Features 409