Bug 421637 – sys-apps/man-pages: show warning about missing cron file only when that file doesn't exist

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Pacho Ramos 2012-06-17 18:44:25 UTC]

I see this message on every update:

LOG: postinst
If you don't have a makewhatis cronjob, then you
should update the whatis database yourself:
 # makewhatis -u

But, in most common scenario, a cron job is provided by man: /etc/cron.daily/makewhatis

Then, I think that would be better to show the message if that file is missing as, otherwise, there is no need to manually run makewhatis -u

Thanks

Reproducible: Always

[Comment 1 SpanKY 2012-06-29 04:48:53 UTC]

the counter point is that existence of a cronjob file does not mean you have a crond installed & running ...

[Comment 2 Pacho Ramos 2012-06-29 06:35:07 UTC]

But that case would apply to every ebuild providing a cron file and, then, following that reasoning we should add similar warnings for them also but, as we already have a specific section in Gentoo Handbook telling people to install a cron handled (vixie, dcron, cronie...), I think this kind of messages are not needed or, at least, we could reword handbook a bit to enforce more cron daemon installation

[Comment 3 SpanKY 2012-08-18 17:22:28 UTC]

(In reply to comment #2)

not all cronjobs affect the general operation of the program.  it is not obvious that running `man -f` or `whatis` won't work without having the cronjob active.

[Comment 4 Pacho Ramos 2012-09-05 18:33:04 UTC]

If you want to be sure crond is started, maybe it could be checked with:
if [ "$(rc-config list default | grep cronie)" = "" ] ; then
   elog "Blabla"
fi

The problem is that very cron implementarion uses a different name for his init.d file :S

[Comment 5 SpanKY 2012-11-11 08:32:33 UTC]

(In reply to comment #4)

yes, that and you can do ROOT= installs

i've just thrown the message away.  if people don't setup a cron daemon, then they can probably handle basic stuff like this.

[Comment 6 SpanKY 2012-11-11 08:33:22 UTC]

Commit message: Drop whatis warning as most people will be using a crond
http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-apps/man-pages/man-pages-3.43.ebuild?r1=1.1&r2=1.2