Anacron is a periodic command scheduler. It executes commands at intervals
specified in days. Unlike cron, it does not assume that the system is running
continuously. It can therefore be used to control the execution of daily,
weekly and monthly jobs (or anything with a period of n days), on systems
that don't run 24 hours a day. When installed and configured properly,
Anacron will make sure that the commands are run at the specified intervals
as closely as machine-uptime permits.
Every time Anacron is run, it reads a configuration file that specifies the
jobs Anacron controls, and their periods in days. If a job wasn't executed in
the last n days, where n is the period of that job, Anacron executes it.
Anacron then records the date in a special timestamp file that it keeps for
each job, so it can know when to run it again. When all the executed commands
terminate, Anacron exits. |
