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

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 02:42:23AM -0000, Daniel Richard G. wrote:
> If anacron sending out e-mail under such circumstances is a desired
> behavior, could you at least make the message more intelligible, with a
> mention of the likelihood that a previously-started cron job has hung?

> Even nicer would be some shell magic that greps the process table for
> children of the existing anacron process, so that the message can
> actually name what specific job is at fault---and users can file bugs
> against the appropriate package(s) instead of coming here.

I wouldn't block someone from making such a change, but again, this is
fixing secondary symptoms instead of the real bug.  anacron should not
block indefinitely and fail to run again due to misbehaving cron jobs; and
the misbehaving cronjob that we know about should be fixed so that it
doesn't misbehave.  Making the error mails clearer is, to put it bluntly,
polishing a turd.

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

Title:
  start: Job is already running: anacron

Status in “anacron” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  New

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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