Subject: Origin of /etc/periodic in Alpine

From: Jordan Christiansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2022 12:45:24 -0500

Does anyone know the history of /etc/periodic in Alpine? As far as I 
know, periodic was invented by FreeBSD[1], and I haven't found any 
other systems that support it, not even other BSDs. I think the 
implementation of periodic in Alpine[2] is very simple and elegant. 
FreeBSD's implementation may have a couple extra features, but it's 
also a standalone program with an associated config file. In Alpine, 5 
lines in the default crontab are enough to give us 95% of the features.

Whose idea was this? Does any other Linux distro support periodic?

[1]: 
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=periodic&manpath=FreeBSD+13.1-RELEASE+and+Ports
[2]: 
https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/blob/master/main/alpine-baselayout/crontab

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From: Konstantin Kulikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2022 14:43:09 +0300

at least debian 6 from 2014 had similar crontab

17 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts
--report /etc/cron.daily )
47 6 * * 7 root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts
--report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 6 1 * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts
--report /etc/cron.monthly )

And run-parts manpage mentions 1994 as copyright. So I guess the idea
is pretty old.

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From: Natanael Copa <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 07:48:02 +0200

Hi,

On Sat, 20 Aug 2022 12:45:24 -0500

> https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/blob/master/main/alpine-baselayout/crontab

Many ideas from early days of Alpine comes from FreeBSD. /etc/periodic is one of them.

I wanted something that felt like *BSD, but had linux kernel with the better hardware support.

Also first iteration of apk-tools was based on FreeBSD's pkg_add.
http://apk-tools.sourceforge.net

-nc

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From: Jordan Christiansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:50:15 -0500

That's all very interesting! Thanks!