PERIODIC.CONF(5) BSD File Formats Manual PERIODIC.CONF(5)NAMEperiodic.conf — periodic job configuration information
DESCRIPTION
The file periodic.conf contains a description of how daily, weekly and
monthly system maintenance jobs should run. It resides in the
/etc/defaults directory and parts may be overridden by a file of the same
name in /etc, which itself may be overridden by the
/etc/periodic.conf.local file.
The periodic.conf file is actually sourced as a shell script from each of
the periodic scripts and is intended to simply provide default configura‐
tion variables.
The following variables are used by periodic(8) itself:
local_periodic
(str) List of directories to search for periodic scripts. This
list is always prefixed with /etc/periodic, and is only used when
an argument to periodic(8) is not an absolute directory name.
⟨dir⟩_output
(path or list) What to do with the output of the scripts executed
from the directory dir. If this variable is set to an absolute
path name, output is logged to that file, otherwise it is taken
as one or more space separated email addresses and mailed to
those users. If this variable is not set or is empty, output is
sent to standard output.
For an unattended machine, suitable values for daily_output,
weekly_output, and monthly_output might be “/var/log/daily.log”,
“/var/log/weekly.log”, and “/var/log/monthly.log” respectively,
as newsyslog(8) will rotate these files (if they exists) at the
appropriate times.
⟨dir⟩_show_success
⟨dir⟩_show_info
⟨dir⟩_show_badconfig
(bool) These variables control whether periodic(8) will mask the
output of the executed scripts based on their return code (where
dir is the base directory name in which each script resides). If
the return code of a script is ‘0’ and ⟨dir⟩_show_success is set
to “NO”, periodic(8) will mask the script's output. If the
return code of a script is ‘1’ and ⟨dir⟩_show_info is set to
“NO”, periodic(8) will mask the script's output. If the return
code of a script is ‘2’ and ⟨dir⟩_show_badconfig is set to “NO”,
periodic(8) will mask the script's output. If these variables
are set to neither “YES” nor “NO”, they default to “YES”, “YES”
and “NO” respectively.
Refer to the periodic(8) manual page for how script return codes
are interpreted.
The following variables are used by the standard scripts that reside in
/etc/periodic/daily:
daily_clean_tmps_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to clear temporary directories
daily.
daily_clean_tmps_dirs
(str) Set to the list of directories to clear if
daily_clean_tmps_enable is set to “YES”.
daily_clean_tmps_days
(num) When daily_clean_tmps_enable is set, this must also be set
to the number of days old that a file's access and modification
times must be before it is deleted.
daily_clean_tmps_ignore
(str) Set to the list of files that should not be deleted when
daily_clean_tmps_enable is set to “YES”. Wild card characters
are permitted.
daily_clean_tmps_verbose
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want the removed files to be reported
in your daily output.
daily_clean_msgs_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you wish old system messages to be purged.
daily_clean_msgs_days
(num) Set to the number of days that files must not have been
modified before they are deleted. If this variable is left
blank, the msgs(1) default is used.
daily_clean_rwho_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you wish old files in /var/who to be
purged.
daily_clean_rwho_days
(num) Set to the number of days that files must not have been
modified before they are deleted.
daily_clean_rwho_verbose
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want the removed files to be reported
in your daily output.
daily_accounting_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to rotate your daily accounting
files. No rotations are necessary unless accounting_enable is
enabled in rc.conf(5).
daily_accounting_compress
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want your daily accounting files to be
compressed using gzip(1).
daily_accounting_save
(num) When daily_accounting_enable is set, this may also be set
to the number of daily accounting files that are to be saved.
The default is “3”.
daily_accounting_flags
(str) Set to the arguments to pass to the sa(8) utility (in addi‐
tion to -s) when daily_accounting_enable is set to “YES”. The
default is -q.
daily_status_disks_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to run df(1) (with the arguments
supplied in daily_status_disks_df_flags).
daily_status_disks_df_flags
(str) Set to the arguments for the df(1) utility when
daily_status_disks_enable is set to “YES”.
daily_status_network_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to run netstat -i.
daily_status_network_usedns
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to run netstat(1) without the -n
option (to do DNS lookups).
daily_status_rwho_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to run uptime(1) (or ruptime(1)
if rwhod_enable is set to “YES” in /etc/rc.conf).
daily_status_mailq_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to run mailq(1).
daily_status_mailq_shorten
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to shorten the mailq(1) output
when daily_status_mailq_enable is set to “YES”.
daily_status_include_submit_mailq
(bool) Set to “YES” if you also want to run mailq(1) on the sub‐
mit mail queue when daily_status_mailq_enable is set to “YES”.
This may not work with MTAs other than sendmail(8).
daily_local
(str) Set to a list of extra scripts that should be run after all
other daily scripts. All scripts must be absolute path names.
The following variables are used by the standard scripts that reside in
/etc/periodic/weekly:
weekly_whatis_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to run
/usr/libexec/makewhatis.local. This script regenerates the data‐
base used by the apropos(1) command.
weekly_local
(str) Set to a list of extra scripts that should be run after all
other weekly scripts. All scripts must be absolute path names.
The following variables are used by the standard scripts that reside in
/etc/periodic/monthly:
monthly_accounting_enable
(bool) Set to “YES” if you want to do login accounting using the
ac(8) command.
monthly_local
(str) Set to a list of extra scripts that should be run after all
other monthly scripts. All scripts must be absolute path names.
FILES
/etc/defaults/periodic.conf The default configuration file. This file
contains all default variables and values.
/etc/periodic.conf The usual system specific variable override
file.
/etc/periodic.conf.local An additional override file, useful when
/etc/periodic.conf is shared or distributed.
SEE ALSOapropos(1), calendar(1), df(1), diff(1), gzip(1), man(1), msgs(1),
netstat(1), nice(1), ac(8), newsyslog(8), periodic(8), sendmail(8)HISTORY
The periodic.conf file appeared in FreeBSD 4.1.
AUTHORS
Brian Somers ⟨brian@Awfulhak.org⟩
BSD May 12, 2007 BSD
