All,

I've just discovered that my various Devuan systems aren't running
cron.daily or cron.weekly tasks because /etc/crontab performs a test on
anacron being present.  However /etc/crontab doesn't need anacron for
cron.hourly:

# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
# command to install the new version when you edit this file
# and files in /etc/cron.d. These files also have username fields,
# that none of the other crontabs do.

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# Example of job definition:
# .---------------- minute (0 - 59)
# |  .------------- hour (0 - 23)
# |  |  .---------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |  |  |  .------- month (1 - 12) OR jan,feb,mar,apr ...
# |  |  |  |  .---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7) OR
sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat
# |  |  |  |  |
# *  *  *  *  * user-name command to be executed
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 )


Why do we need anacron at all?  Surely we can just do:

17 *    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
47 6    * * 7   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly
52 6    1 * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly


... or am I missing something?


Mike