On Mon, 4 Jan 1999 Havard.Eidnes@runit.sintef.no wrote:

: >      You would also have to worry about /var/account,
: > /var/at/jobs, /var/log, /var/mail, /var/msgs, /var/preserve,
: > /var/spool, and /var/yp.  Clearly, there are many things in
: > /var that need to be backed up to get a full system backup,
: > which means this suggested change is completely pointless.  I
: > really don't see what the problem is or why Manuel considers
: > this to be a bug.
: 
: Well, I guess this depends on how critical you consider all the
: above to be.  Surely preserving folks print files in /var/spool
: is not as critical as maintaining the automatic periodic system
: maintenance functions.  True, /var/at/jobs is in the same
: category, but most of the others aren't.

I don't even consider at-jobs to fall into the same category on my system.
Crontabs here nearly *never* change, but if they do I need to have the
changes backed up.  Missed mqueue or atjob entries mean a loss without
explicitly backing them up; however, when backing up workstation-grade
systems, they are hardly important compared to crontabs.

I'll second or third or whatever the move of /var/cron/tabs to
/etc/crontabs. (Note that all of my workstations already do this, with a
symlink in /var/cron pointing to /etc/crontabs.  It would be nice to
standardize this.)

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)