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Love systemd timers

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Re: Love systemd timers

#41

Post by mid-kid »

gchamonlive wrote: post #23

Moved from cronie to systemd timers because they are resilient to system startup times. My backup strategy is to create a borg archive entry every day at a fixed time. With cronie the system needs to be running at the scheduled time, but systemd timer tolerates this and runs the service as soons as the system is available. Btw this is my repo for the backup automation: https://github.com/gchamon/borg-automated-backup…

Cronie has a mechanism for this, called "anacron", which is called hourly by cron (on my system, /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron), and performs all the /etc/cron.{daily,weekly,monthly} tasks, no matter if the earliest possible schedule was missed (and with a configurable random delay). You can modify /etc/anacrontab to create custom schedules.

To do this at the user level, you can add something like "@hourly anacron -t /path/to/anacrontab -S /path/to/spooldir" to the user's crontab, though I've never tried this.

Many cron implementations have a similar mechanism.

Re: Love systemd timers

#42

Post by tdeck »

NikhilVerma wrote: post #39

I have a Canon printer, I actually can't trust that their print nozzle won't get jammed up after sitting idle for a while. So I had claude setup a systemd script to print a picture of my dog every week, I ensure it has enough CMYK spectrum to stress the printer. Its a nice surprise every monday as I sit on my desk to see a sudden picture pop up from the printer :)

I wish printers could have a mode like this to print random images from an album, or a calendar, rather than wastefully draining ink into a sponge every few days.

If nothing else, maybe it could be some kid's high school science fair project idea.

Re: Love systemd timers

#43

Post by frays »

I've been using Linux for over 20 years, systemd for over 10.

Yet there's always something new to learn and actually consider as another useful tool.

Re: Love systemd timers

#44

Post by wpm »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #3
jjgreen wrote: post #2

I've been almost convinced by systemd (and have switched to using it), but God the syntax of those service files is so ugly ...

Could have been worse. Could have been YAML. Could have been XML.

Could have been better.

Could have been XML Property Lists.

ducks

Re: Love systemd timers

#45

Post by stryan »

esperent wrote: post #34
stryan wrote: post #29

Timers can work with arbitrary units (not just a similarly-named service unit) so they can be surprisingly flexible. I have a timer on my servers that starts a backup.target that fires off a full "restic backup","restic prune", "restic forget" backup cycle each morning with randomized start times and notifications. The actual restic-* units are Podman Quadlets so the whole setup runs agnosticaly of what's on the serv…

Why do you randomize your backup times?

Should have been more clear: I use RandomizedOffsetSec= to add a random offset to a set start time (usually 4am), to prevent overloading the backup server, not truly random start times.

Re: Love systemd timers

#46

Post by magicalhippo »

NikhilVerma wrote: post #39

I have a Canon printer, I actually can't trust that their print nozzle won't get jammed up after sitting idle for a while. So I had claude setup a systemd script to print a picture of my dog every week, I ensure it has enough CMYK spectrum to stress the printer. Its a nice surprise every monday as I sit on my desk to see a sudden picture pop up from the printer :)

Dad had an Deskjet 720 or something like that.

It sat unused and powered off for a couple of years after he passed, until I needed a color print.

Didn't do anything but hook it up to power and print. Took about 1/5 of a page until all colors were back in action, after that it printed about 20 pages flawlessly.

Re: Love systemd timers

#47

Post by sammy2255 »

I've converted all my crons to systemd timers+services over the past year but cant help but think it's sort of.. less tangible than cron

Like imagine trying to explain systemd timers and services and unit files to a beginner.

Re: Love systemd timers

#48

Post by linsomniac »

jjgreen wrote: post #2

I've been almost convinced by systemd (and have switched to using it), but God the syntax of those service files is so ugly ...

Hard disagree. Compared to an init script, with all its boilerplate, I'd take a systemd unit file.

Re: Love systemd timers

#49

Post by sunrunner »

tdeck wrote: post #42
NikhilVerma wrote: post #39

I have a Canon printer, I actually can't trust that their print nozzle won't get jammed up after sitting idle for a while. So I had claude setup a systemd script to print a picture of my dog every week, I ensure it has enough CMYK spectrum to stress the printer. Its a nice surprise every monday as I sit on my desk to see a sudden picture pop up from the printer :)

I wish printers could have a mode like this to print random images from an album, or a calendar, rather than wastefully draining ink into a sponge every few days. If nothing else, maybe it could be some kid's high school science fair project idea.

How about printing a QR code for a randomly generated private key for Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin wallet, then every few days you get a tiny moment of excitement, hope, and then disappointment. It's still wasteful, but it could pay off big time?

Re: Love systemd timers

#50

Post by RicoElectrico »

NikhilVerma wrote: post #39

I have a Canon printer, I actually can't trust that their print nozzle won't get jammed up after sitting idle for a while. So I had claude setup a systemd script to print a picture of my dog every week, I ensure it has enough CMYK spectrum to stress the printer. Its a nice surprise every monday as I sit on my desk to see a sudden picture pop up from the printer :)

I was about to recommend a cheap OKI LED color printer (I think C322dn); alas they withdrew from consumer market :/ The colors are super nice and uniform, even if the maximum resolution is only 600 dpi - and the toner won't dry out, which was my brother's crucial purchase criterion; we had HP inkjet clogged more than once.
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