Package: anacron Version: 2.3-43 Severity: normal X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]Dear Maintainer, The other day I made a change to a script that broke it but I decided to fix it later. Much to my surprise I noticed next week that journal was flooded with hourly errors from anacron!> Nov 13 07:32:59 host anacron[1606932]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named
period on
line 13, skipping Nov 13 07:37:59 host anacron[1606932]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 08:31:45 host anacron[1607068]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 08:31:45 host anacron[1607068]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 09:33:15 host anacron[1607245]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 09:33:15 host anacron[1607245]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 10:32:15 host anacron[1607501]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 10:32:15 host anacron[1607501]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 11:34:05 host anacron[1607662]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 11:34:05 host anacron[1607662]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 12:34:55 host anacron[1607893]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 12:34:55 host anacron[1607893]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 13:34:00 host anacron[1608052]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 13:34:00 host anacron[1608052]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 14:34:03 host anacron[1608198]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 14:34:03 host anacron[1608198]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 15:32:15 host anacron[1608439]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 15:32:15 host anacron[1608439]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 16:32:56 host anacron[1608607]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 16:32:56 host anacron[1608607]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 17:33:15 host anacron[1608769]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 17:33:15 host anacron[1608769]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 18:33:15 host anacron[1608941]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 18:33:15 host anacron[1608941]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 19:30:34 host anacron[1609090]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 19:30:34 host anacron[1609090]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 20:33:07 host anacron[1609232]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 20:33:07 host anacron[1609232]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 21:31:02 host anacron[1609414]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 21:31:02 host anacron[1609414]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 22:31:34 host anacron[1609579]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 22:31:34 host anacron[1609579]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output Nov 13 23:32:07 host anacron[1609725]: /etc/anacrontab: Unknown named period on line 13, skipping Nov 13 23:32:07 host anacron[1609725]: Can't find sendmail at /usr/bin/sendmail, not mailing output That's just one day. Look at the whole week: $ journalctl --identifier=anacron --since=-1week --priority=err | wc --lines 230 It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Turns out the script was used in one of my @weekly anacrontab commands. Anacron tries to mail output because my script failed. I still don't know what that unknown named period message is about. The big issue is that anacron can't detect if a script changed after it was added as a job. Please add this feature to at least make the error messages more clear.
@weekly is not supported in anacron 2.3-43, but I did recently add support for @daily and @weekly period names in anacron 2.3-44. The error messages still appear for other incorrect period names in anacrontab. I will try to fix this for the next Debian release of anacron.
Checking if a script has not changed before running a job would be harder. I have a few ideas for what can work.
-- Lance Lin GPG Fingerprint: 4A31 DB5A 1EE4 096C 8739 9880 9036 4929 4C33 F9B7
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