[Bug 606491] Re: start: Job is already running: anacron

[Johannes Martin]

The description of the --quiet option says: "Reduces output of all
commands to errors only."

Anacron not starting a second instance because another anacron is
already running IS an error, as we expect the start command to
successfully start anacron. We expect anacron to do the periodic jobs
reliably. And if some job is hung (as in the case of apt-key in my case)
we need some notification about the error.

I see a couple of solutions:
- Add an option to anacron that makes it check when it was last run and only run it again if a configuration amount of time has passed since the last run. If the time has not passed, silently quit.
- Make anacron execute all jobs in background and quit once all jobs have been started. Would need some helper process to record and report output of the jobs via mail.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/606491

Title:
  start: Job is already running: anacron

Status in “anacron” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: anacron

  Every day cron sends me this email:

    Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 07:30:01 +1200
    From: Cron Daemon <root at hostname>
    To: root at hostname
    Subject: Cron <root at hostname> start -q anacron || :

    start: Job is already running: anacron

  I've tried to find out why it was running twice, but I could only find
  one copy of anacron in the cron directories...

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