DESCRIPTION

     The periodic program is intended to be called by cron(8) to execute shell
     scripts located in the specified directory.

     One or more of the following arguments must be specified:

     daily    Perform the standard daily periodic executable run.  This usu-
              ally occurs early in the morning (local time).

     weekly   Perform the standard weekly periodic executable run.  This usu-
              ally occurs on Sunday mornings.

     monthly  Perform the standard monthly periodic executable run.  This usu-
              ally occurs on the first day of the month.

     path     An arbitrary directory containing a set of executables to be
              run.

     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 speci-
     fied by the local_periodic setting in periodic.conf(5) (see below).

     The periodic program 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:

     0     The script has produced nothing notable in its output.  The
           <basedir>_show_success variable controls the masking of this out-
           put.

     1     The script has produced some notable information in its output.
           The <basedir>_show_info variable controls the masking of this out-
           put.

     2     The script has produced some warnings due to invalid configuration
           settings.  The <basedir>_show_badconfig variable controls the mask-
           ing of this output.

     >2    The script has produced output that must not be masked.

     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.

     components, each executable must be responsible for configuring its own
     appropriate environment.

FILES

     /etc/crontab        The periodic program is typically called via entries
                         in the system default cron(8) table.

     /etc/periodic       The top level directory containing daily, weekly, and
                         monthly subdirectories which contain standard system
                         periodic executables.

     /etc/defaults/periodic.conf
                         The periodic.conf system registry contains variables
                         that control the behaviour of periodic and the stan-
                         dard daily, weekly, and monthly scripts.

     /etc/periodic.conf  This file contains local overrides for the default
                         periodic configuration.

EXAMPLES

     The system crontab should have entries for periodic similar to the fol-
     lowing example:

           # do daily/weekly/monthly maintenance
           0      2       *       *       *       root    periodic daily
           0      3       *       *       6       root    periodic weekly
           0      5       1       *       *       root    periodic monthly

     The /etc/defaults/periodic.conf system registry will typically have a
     local_periodic variable reading:

           local_periodic="/usr/local/etc/periodic /usr/X11R6/etc/periodic"

     To log periodic output instead of receiving it as email, add the follow-
     ing 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 fol-
     lowing lines to /etc/periodic.conf:

           daily_show_success=NO
           daily_show_info=NO
           daily_show_badconfig=NO

SEE ALSO

     sh(1), crontab(5), periodic.conf(5), cron(8)

DIAGNOSTICS

     Exit status is 0 on success and 1 if the command fails for one of the
     Paul Traina <pst@FreeBSD.org>
     Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org>

BSD                            November 28, 2001                           BSD