See #15335 and #13353 for details
Could you please provide information on "at" that is seriously at risk? I understand (and agree) that the start-up and shut-down ordering of RH Linux scripts could be modified... but a complete re-design of these scripts is a large task that probably won't get fixed right before release; it's something that should be a "release deliverable feature". However, if there is some race-condition, or denial-of-service, or data corruption, or something that can be demonstrated as a real problem, I would like to see/hear/read more on the issue.
Because (ana)cron and at are related programs I will write about both... When a job will be executed immediately after at/cron/anacron has been started, the problems occur. Such race-conditions can be triggered e.g.: - with `at' or similarly `anacron': create a job which has to be executed at 00:10, stop the machine at 00:00 and start it again at 00:20. `at' will execute pending jobs at startup - with `cron': create a crontab entry '@reboot doSomething' Some critical actions can be: - DNS related ones: if localhost is the NS-server, bind will be started at pos 55 -- that's after `at' and `cron'. Example: | host <host_in_my_domain> || do_bad_things - Time related ones: ntp starts at pos 55 and can set time to values causing an unwanted behavior of the scheduling progs - Mail related ones: `sendmail' starts at pos 80. If a job needs a sendmail daemon listing on port 25 it will fail. A real world example is `fetchmail' started by users at '@reboot'-time. There are some cases left, depending e.g. on xinetd(50), lpd(60) or squid(90), where similar examples are possible. I understand that changing startup positions is a critical step shortly before the release, but I don't see any reason why user-oriented daemons must be executed before important system services. Additional at and cron are not working determinedly (sometimes a job will be executed before positions >40, sometimes not). If the @reboot feature is really needed at this stage, it's better to write a seperate initscript doing it.
Still on florence, beta1
Still in beta2
still in at-3.1.8-16
okay