PERIODIC(8) | System Manager's Manual | PERIODIC(8) |
periodic
— run
periodic system functions
periodic |
directory ... |
The periodic
utility is intended to be
called by launchd(8) to execute shell
scripts located in the specified directory.
One or more of the following arguments must be specified:
If an argument is an absolute directory name it is used as is, otherwise it is searched for under /etc/periodic and any other directories specified by the local_periodic setting in periodic.conf(5) (see below).
The periodic
utility will run each
executable file in the directory or directories specified. If a file does
not have the executable bit set, it is silently ignored.
Each script is required to exit with one of the following values:
If the relevant variable (where
⟨basedir⟩ is the base directory in which
the script resides) is set to “NO
” in
periodic.conf, periodic
will
mask the script output. If the variable is not set to either
“YES
” or
“NO
”, it will be given a default value
as described in
periodic.conf(5).
All remaining script output is delivered based on the value of the ⟨basedir⟩_output setting.
If this is set to a path name (beginning with a
‘/
’ character), output is simply
logged to that file. newsyslog(8)
knows about the files /var/log/daily.log,
/var/log/weekly.log and
/var/log/monthly.log, and if they exist, it will
rotate them at the appropriate times. These are therefore good values if you
wish to log periodic
output.
If the
⟨basedir⟩_output
value does not begin with a ‘/
’ and is
not empty, it is assumed to contain a list of email addresses, and the
output is mailed to them. If
⟨basedir⟩_show_empty_output
is set to “NO
”, then no mail will be
sent if the output was empty.
If ⟨basedir⟩_output is not set or is empty, output is sent to standard output.
The periodic
utility sets the
PATH
environment to include all standard system
directories, but no additional directories, such as
/usr/local/bin. If executables are added which
depend upon other path components, each executable must be responsible for
configuring its own appropriate environment.
periodic
utility is typically called via these
launchd(8) jobsperiodic
and the standard daily,
weekly, and monthly
scriptsperiodic
configurationExit status is 0 on success and 1 if the command fails.
The /etc/defaults/periodic.conf system registry will typically have a local_periodic variable reading:
local_periodic="/usr/local/etc/periodic"
To log periodic
output instead of
receiving it as email, add the following lines to
/etc/periodic.conf:
daily_output=/var/log/daily.log weekly_output=/var/log/weekly.log monthly_output=/var/log/monthly.log
To only see important information from daily periodic jobs, add the following lines to /etc/periodic.conf:
daily_show_success=NO daily_show_info=NO daily_show_badconfig=NO
The command may fail for one of the following reasons:
periodic
to specify where the script fragments reside.The periodic
utility first appeared in
FreeBSD 3.0.
Paul Traina
⟨pst@FreeBSD.org⟩
Brian Somers ⟨brian@Awfulhak.org⟩
Since one specifies information about a directory using shell variables containing the string, ⟨basedir⟩, ⟨basedir⟩ must only contain characters that are valid within a sh(1) variable name, alphanumerics and underscores, and the first character may not be numeric.
August 30, 2007 | macOS 14.6 |