Understanding the Automatons
Pages: 1, 2, 3

Let's take a quick look at each script, what it does, and whether or not it runs by default. These details are described in man periodic.conf which I've summarized in the following chart:

Name of script	Action	Default
Daily scripts:
100.clean_disks	removes all matching files	NO
110.clean_tmps	clears temporary directories	NO
120.clean_preserve	removes old files from /var/preserve	YES
130.clean_msgs	old system messages purged	YES
140.clean_rwho	old files in /var/rwho purged	YES
150.clean_hoststat	old files in /var/spool/.hoststat purged.	YES
200.backup_passwd	/etc/master.passwd and /etc/group files backed up and modifications reported	YES
210.backup_aliases	/etc/mail/aliases file backed up and modifications displayed	YES
220.backup_distfile	/etc/Distfile file backed up and modifications displayed	YES
300.calendar	runs calendar -a daily	NO
310.accounting	rotates daily accounting files	YES
320.distfile	runs rdist(1) daily	YES
330.news	runs /etc/news.expire	YES
340.uucp	runs /etc/uuclean.daily	YES
400.status_disks	runs df(1) and dump -W	YES
410.status_uucp	runs uustat -a	YES
420.status_network	runs netstat -i	YES
430.status_rwho	runs uptime(1)	YES
440.status_mailq	runs mailq(1)	YES
450.status_security	runs /etc/security	YES
460.status_mail_rejects	summarizes mail rejections logged to /var/log/maillog	YES
470.status_named	summarizes denied zone transfers	YES
500.queuerun	manually runs the mail queue	YES
999.local	list of extra scripts in /etc/daily.local
Weekly Scripts
120.clean_kvmdb	purges old /var/db/kvm_*.db files	YES
300.uucp	runs /usr/libexec/uucp/clean.weekly	YES
310.locate	runs /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb	YES
320.whatis	runs /usr/libexec/makewhatis.local	YES
330.catman	runs /usr/libexec/catman.local	NO
340.noid	locate files with an invalid owner or group (orphans)	NO
400.status_pkg	uses pkg_version(1) to list out of date installed packages	NO
999.local	list of extra scripts in /etc/weekly.local
Monthly Scripts
200.accounting	does login accounting using the ac(8) command	YES
999.local	list of extra scripts in /etc/monthly.local

You'll notice that there are quite a few scripts and most of them are enabled by default. Let's become the superuser and copy the default file to the file that we'll customize:

su
Password:
cp /etc/defaults/periodic.conf /etc/periodic.conf

I'll then open up /etc/periodic.conf in my favorite text editor and pick through the interesting lines. Let's start with this bit:

<snip>
# Daily options
# These options are used by periodic(8) itself to 
# determine what to do with the output of the sub-programs
# that are run, and where to send that output.  $daily_output
# might be set to /var/log/daily.log if you wish to log the 
# daily output and have the files rotated by newsyslog(8)
#
daily_output="root"         # user or /file
daily_show_success="YES"    # scripts returning 0
daily_show_info="YES"       # scripts returning 1
daily_show_badconfig="NO"   # scripts returning 2

You'll note that by default, the results of running the daily scripts are emailed to root. If you check root's email, you'll see messages with the subject "hostname daily run output" and if you read one of those messages, the output should match up to the daily scripts that are marked as "YES". You can have the output sent to another user by replacing "root" with a user name on the "daily_output" line.

Alternatively, you can specify that the output be sent to a file, usually /var/log/daily.log. This file doesn't exist by default, so you'll want to create it by using touch /var/log/daily.log.

Pages: 1, 2, 3

Next Page