carolf@hpirs.HP.COM (Carol Fernihough) (10/15/88)
I have some questions regarding at(1): 1) Why isn't /usr/lib/cron/queuedefs described in the documentation (man page or otherwise)? Should the system administrator know what it does and how to modify it? 2) Why isn't /usr/lib/cron/.proto described in the documentation (it isn't even listed in the FILES section of the man page)? Why does at(1) attempt to use /usr/lib/cron/.proto.<queuetype> as the prototype? How would /usr/lib/cron/.proto.<queuetype> get created? Is this something that the system administrator should know about? 3) Why isn't the -q option documented? I'd appreciate your comments. Thanks, Carol Fernihough hplabs!hpda!carolf
ccea3@rivm.UUCP (Adri Verhoef) (10/18/88)
In article <3920007@hpirs.HP.COM> carolf@hpirs.HP.COM (Carol Fernihough) has some questions regarding at(1): >1) Why isn't /usr/lib/cron/queuedefs described in the documentation It was posted a while ago: <>From: guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) <>Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5 <>Subject: Re: "queuedefs" file format completely undocumented <>Message-ID: <39786@sun.uucp> <>Date: 23 Jan 88 00:42:54 GMT <>References: <39779@sun.uucp> <>Sender: news@sun.uucp <>Lines: 108 <> <>Oops! Wrong name line. Try this instead: <> <>.TH QUEUEDEFS 4 <>.SH NAME <>queuedefs \- at/batch/cron queue description file <>.SH SYNOPSIS <>.LP <>.B /usr/lib/cron/queuedefs <>.SH DESCRIPTION <>The <>.I queuedefs\^ <>file describes the characteristics of the queues managed by <>.IR cron (1M). <>Each non-comment line in this file describes one queue. <>The format of the lines are as follows: <>.RS <>.LP <>\f2q\f3.\f1[\f2njob\f3j\f1][\f2nice\f3n\f1][\f2nwait\f3w\f1] <>.RE <>.LP <>The fields in this line are: <>.RS <>.TP <>.I q\^ <>The name of the queue. <>.B a <>is the default queue for jobs started by <>.IR at (1); <>.B b <>is the default queue for jobs started by <>.IR batch (1); <>.B c <>is the default queue for jobs run from a <>.B crontab <>file. <>.TP <>.I njob\^ <>The maximum number of jobs that can be run simultaneously in that queue; if <>more than <>.I njob\^ <>jobs are ready to run, only the first <>.I njob\^ <>jobs will be run, and the others will be run as jobs that are currently running <>terminate. The default value is 100. <>.TP <>.I nice\^ <>The <>.IR nice (1) <>value to give to all jobs in that queue that are not run with a user <>.SM ID <>of super-user. The default value is 2. <>.TP <>.I nwait\^ <>The number of seconds to wait before rescheduling a job that was deferred <>because more than <>.I njob\^ <>jobs were running in that job's queue, or because more than 25 jobs were <>running in all the queues. The default value is 60. <>.RE <>.LP <>Lines beginning with <>.B # <>are comments, and are ignored. <>.SH EXAMPLE <>.RS <>.nf <>.ft B <>a.4j1n <>b.2j2n90w <>.RE <>.fi <>.ft R <>.LP <>This file specifies that the <>.B a <>queue, for <>.I at\^ <>jobs, can have up to 4 jobs running simultaneously; those jobs will be run with <>a <>.I nice\^ <>value of 1. As no <>.I nwait\^ <>value was given, if a job cannot be run because too many other jobs are running <>.I cron\^ <>will wait 60 seconds before trying again to run it. <>The <>.B b <>queue, for <>.I batch\^ <>jobs, can have up to 2 jobs running simultaneously; those jobs will be run with <>a <>.I nice\^ <>value of 2. If a job cannot be run because too many other jobs are running, <>.I cron\^ <>will wait 90 seconds before trying again to run it. <>All other queues can have up to 100 jobs running simultaneously; they will be <>run with a <>.I nice\^ <>value of 2, and if a job cannot be run because too many other jobs are running <>.I cron\^ <>will wait 60 seconds before trying again to run it. <>.SH FILES <>/usr/lib/cron/queuedefs <>.SH "SEE ALSO" <>cron(1M) <> Guy Harris <> {ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy <> guy@sun.com > Should the system administrator know > what it does and how to modify it? In general, (s)he should know that there is a manpage, and I think it should be read and used only when it's really needed, and carefully.
carolf@hpirs.HP.COM (Carol Fernihough) (10/27/88)
Thanks to Adri for the information on queuedefs. Does anyone know why the '-q' option to at(1) and the .proto file isn't documented? Carol Fernihough hplabs!hpda!carolf
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (10/29/88)
>Does anyone know why the '-q' option to at(1) and the .proto file isn't >documented? Because somebody at AT&T didn't do their job, which is the same reason why I wrote the "queuedefs" man page. Next question: why doesn't the S5R3 machine-readable documentation come with anything on the S5 accounting software? The reason I've heard is that it's because they don't ship that software in binary forms for 3B2s.... Why does "UNIX documentation" (not, it's not just AT&T, Berkeley has been guilty of the same thing, and so have other vendors) so often seem to be a contradiction in terms?