On Tue, 2003-12-23 at 13:12, Kevin wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-12-23 at 12:17, George Gambill wrote:
> > Every now and then I notice intense disk activity.  The disk light is on
> 
> I'll bet it is updatedb or makewhatis or logrotate or something similar
> doing it's job.  These janitorial functions are usually configured as
> cron jobs.
> 
> man cron
> man crontab
> man anacron
> man anacrontab
> 
> ls -halF /etc/cron.*
> 

Also, when the disk is thrashing check the `top` command to see what is
working so hard.

Note the time of day it happens (and/or day of week) and check for a
matching entry in the appropriate /etc/cron.* file.  If you are
unfamiliar with cron, there are plenty of web resources describing cron
syntax like: http://www.tech-geeks.org/contrib/mdrone/cron-howto.html

For example, my box is setup to execute jobs in the /etc/cron.daily
directory at 04:02 every morning...

 # cat /etc/crontab | grep daily
   02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
 
 At that time every morning cron will launch these jobs...

 # ls -hF /etc/cron.daily/
   logrotate*  
   makewhatis.cron*  
   collect-honeypot*
   tmpwatch*  
   tripwire-check*
   snort-check*



...Kevin