[ On Tue, March 14, 1995 at 10:05:07 (+1100), matthew green wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: The HylaFAX "Where do binaries go?" meta-issue 
>
> crontabs are a special case;  you don't edit them by hand, and everyone
> can (possibly) have one.  perhaps /etc/crontabs would be ok, and leaving
> /var/at where it is (seeing these are transient files).
> 
> has anyone asked vixie?

I would guess Paul was just following the model used by SysV cron, since
it puts the "live" crontabs in /usr/spool/cron/crontabs.....

IMO, porting something to NetBSD should include moving things about to
fit the intent of hier(7), and for cron, I'd say that includes moving
the "live" crontabs to /etc/cron/crontabs or some such similar location,
should it be decided that these files are not "transient" in nature.

W.r.t. cron, I think the issue is that cron can't do its job if /var
gets trashed, thus the control files it uses should be in /etc.  On the
other hand, these really are "transient" files, since they're managed
entirely by the subsystem.  Perhaps they are OK in /var, and perhaps
administrators who worry about such things could write wee scripts that
replace their local crontabs from manually maintained files in /etc (or
/root, or $CVSROOT), every time the system boots, and that ordinary
users be advised that their crontabs may be lost in case of some system
failures.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>