Fcron-2.9.4

The Fcron package contains a periodical command scheduler which aims at replacing Vixie Cron.

Fcron uses the cron facility of syslog to log all messages. Since LFS does not set up this facility in /etc/syslog.conf, it needs to be done prior to installing Fcron. This command will append the necessary line to the current /etc/syslog.conf:

cat >> /etc/syslog.conf << "EOF"
# Begin fcron addition to /etc/syslog.conf

cron.* -/var/log/cron.log

# End fcron addition
EOF

The configuration file has been modified, so reloading the sysklogd daemon will activate the changes.

/etc/rc.d/init.d/sysklogd reload

For security reasons, we need to create an unprivileged user and group for fcron:

groupadd fcron &&
useradd -d /dev/null -g fcron -s /bin/false fcron

Install Fcron by running the following commands:

./configure --without-sendmail --with-answer-all=no &&
make &&
make install

--without-sendmail: Fcron will use an iinstalled MTA to email you the results of the fcron script. If you wish to utilize this feature, change the switch to --with-sendmail=[path to your MTA] .

--with-answer-all=no: After the files are installed, the make install script enters into a configuration routine. The first test will be whether to install a boot script in the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory with the appropriate symbolic links in run levels 2, 3, 4, and 5. The second is to stop any current fcron processes and start a new one. Since this is probably your first install and we want a boot script based upon the BLFS template, we answer 'n' to both tests.

--with-dsssl-dir=/usr/share/sgml/docbook/dsssl-stylesheets-1.78 : This switch can be added if you have installed OpenJade and dsssl-stylesheets to generate the documentation from the DocBook source files.

The Fcron package contains fcron, fcrontab, fcronsighup and fcrondyn.