DAILY(8) BSD System Manager's Manual DAILY(8)
daily, weekly, monthly - periodic system maintenance
/etc/daily
/etc/weekly
/etc/monthly
The three files /etc/daily, /etc/weekly, and /etc/monthly are shell
scripts run on a periodic basis by the clock daemon, cron(8). They take
care of some basic administrative tasks. The results are mailed to root.
Note: The scripts are all run as part of root's crontab(5). However, it
is strongly suggested that the root mail account be an alias that for-
wards messages to a real user or set of users. Otherwise, root's mail
will simply accumulate in /var/mail until the partition holding it runs
out of space. See newaliases(8) for further details.
These scripts should not be altered. Local additions should be made to
the files /etc/daily.local, /etc/weekly.local, and /etc/monthly.local,
which will be executed by /etc/daily, /etc/weekly, and /etc/monthly,
respectively. The *.local files are executed first, which makes it con-
venient to do any necessary cleanup and backup before the script is run.
/etc/daily
This script is run daily. It currently does the following:
- Runs the script /etc/daily.local, if it exists.
- Removes scratch and junk files from /tmp and /var/tmp.
- Removes stale files from the rwhod(8) database.
- Checks for core dumps.
- Removes system messages older than 21 days for the msgs(1) utility.
- Purges accounting records from /var/account, if they exist. See
accton(8) and sa(8).
- Creates a backup root filesystem which is updated daily. This only
happens if the following conditions are met:
1. ROOTBACKUP must be set to 1. It should be added to root's
crontab(5):
ROOTBACKUP=1
2. The mount directory /altroot must exist, and there must be
an /etc/fstab entry specifying 'xx' for the mount options,
e.g.
/dev/wd0j /altroot ffs xx 0 0
- Checks disk status. Reports on the amount of disk used/available via
df(1). Reports on which filesystems need to be dumped via dump(8).
- Reports on the status of the mail queue via mailq(8).
- Reports networking statistics via netstat(1).
- Gives an uptime for every machine which exists in /var/rwho, via the
ruptime(1) utility.
- Runs the calendar(1) utility unless the environment variable CALENDAR
is set to 0 in root's crontab(5) or the host is a yp(8) client.
- If CHECKFILESYSTEMS is set to 1 in root's crontab, runs fsck(8) with
the no-write flag (-n).
- If the file /etc/Distfile exists, runs the rdist(1) utility.
- Runs the system security check script, /etc/security. See security(8)
for further details.
/etc/weekly
This script is run weekly. It currently does the following:
- Runs the script /etc/weekly.local, if it exists.
- Rebuilds the locate(1) database, if there is an existing
/var/db/locate.database file.
- Rebuilds the whatis(1) database(s) via makewhatis(8).
/etc/monthly
This script is run monthly. It currently does the following:
- Runs the script /etc/monthly.local, if it exists.
CALENDAR Determines whether to run calendar(1).
CHECKFILESYSTEMS Determines whether to run fsck(8) with the no-write
flag.
ROOTBACKUP Determines whether to make a backup of the root
filesystem.
/etc/daily Daily maintenance script.
/etc/daily.local Site specific daily maintenance script.
/etc/weekly Weekly maintenance script.
/etc/weekly.local Site specific weekly maintenance script.
/etc/monthly Monthly maintenance script.
/etc/monthly.local Site specific monthly maintenance script.
/var/cron/tabs/root Root crontab(5).
calendar(1), crontab(1), df(1), locate(1), msgs(1), netstat(1), rdist(1),
ruptime(1), rwho(1), whatis(1), crontab(5), accton(8), cron(8), dump(8),
fsck(8), mailq(8), makewhatis(8), sa(8), security(8), yp(8)
This manual page first appeared in OpenBSD 3.4.
If the host machine is not running 24/7, these scripts may never be run.
Adjusting the time fields in the system crontab(5) may partially allevi-
ate this problem.
Be careful when adding local additions. Services such as "www" have their
own users, and should be run as such, not as root. It may be more ap-
propriate to create a separate crontab(5) for such services.
MirBSD #10-current July 25, 2003 1