cron problem

[Javier Perez]

Oftentimes, Cron is used to setup communication with other servers to update
Clamav or Spamassassin, maybe to run Yum check-update.
The issue is that if everybody is hitting the servers on the hour, we have
instataneous hourly DOS attacks on those servers.
The random delay prevents this by randomizing the access time while
guaranteeing that within the next XX minutes you will run the update

Javier


On 1/30/07, kwhiskerz kwhiskerz <kwhiskerz at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On the weekend an update to cron came out with this new script:
> /etc/cron.daily/000-delay.cron
>
> What it appears to do is to introduce a random length of delay before
> cron/anacron run.
>
> What is the point of introducing randomness into a finely tuned system?
>
> When one sets up crontab/anacrontab to go off at precisely a certain time,
> one expects it to run at the time specified, and not at some random time in
> the next 68 minutes!
>
> What purpose does this serve?
>
> kwhiskerz{
>
> ------------------------------
> Stay up-to-date with your friends through the Windows LiveT Spaces friends
> list. Check it out!<http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us>
>
> --
> fedora-list mailing list
> fedora-list at redhat.com
> To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>
>


-- 
------------------------------
/\_/\
|O O|  pepebuho at pananet.com
~~~~ Javier Perez
~~~~   While the night runs
~~~~   toward the day...
  m m   Pepebuho watches
    from his high perch.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20070130/5087d4e7/attachment-0001.htm>