Re: Strategy for "one-off" tasks

[Darren Dunham]

> 
> But to run another one-time-only later then you need another
> filename, and you can't ever remove them or it will run
> again.  The other idea of year.month.day.hr seems cleaner,
> but then there is no assurance that the command will run at
> all (if there is a network problem, for example, during that
> hourly run).  I get a couple of failed connection errors a day
> from remote hosts).

I think the idea is "why would you need to perform a one-time-only
task"?  Can you give an example of what this would be?  Why would it not
need to be performed if a machine were being installed?  (possibly for a
conversion of somthing)?

As an example, if it's for a conversion of some files to a new product,
I'd look for evidence of the old, active configuration.  Have the task
perform the conversion, and only do it if the older configuration were
visible.  You don't care when it's done, and the detection doesn't
require a otherwise unused file lying around.

>    I'm not sure there is an elegant solution for this problem.

I'd like to see a more specific example of the task to run before
agreeing with that.

-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham@taos.com
Unix System Administrator                    Taos - The SysAdmin Company
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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