[alphasubzero949]

I did a google search to see if someone has managed to get anacron working again using launchd, and stumbled upon this:

http://digitalhominid.blogspot.com/

If you used fink to install anacron, just follow his instructions.

However, if you downloaded anacron from Alastair's Place (the dmg file), you'll need to change a few things (highly recommend using TextWrangler):

ProgramArguments: The path to anacron is /usr/local/sbin/anacron
WatchPaths: /etc/anacrontab

Save your changes then launch the plist as per his instructions. Or reboot. You should see that anacron started up in your Console under /var/log/system.log.

A quick check of my system.log appeared that the daily script did in fact work under anacron. It rotated the system.log files as it should have.

[alphasubzero949]

Here's a question: Although Alastair's dmg places an item in /Library/StartupItems and is technically not correct for 10.4, does it seem to still work properly? I noticed in my console logs that anacron was still running every 15 minutes and performing the maintenance scripts.

Perhaps those with trouble were using the fink install and setting their jobs through /etc/crontab?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

Here's a question: Although Alastair's dmg places an item in /Library/StartupItems and is technically not correct for 10.4, does it seem to still work properly? I noticed in my console logs that anacron was still running every 15 minutes and performing the maintenance scripts.

Perhaps those with trouble were using the fink install and setting their jobs through /etc/crontab?

I tried setting a sample tab in /etc/crontab (one that would create a folder on my Desktop) and it worked fine... in the case of DejaVu (software which I was using which relied on Anacron). I'm not setting the DV scripts in the periodic folder. Maybe DV was moved to launchd, and Anacron is now basically invoking nothing?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by besson3c

I tried setting a sample tab in /etc/crontab (one that would create a folder on my Desktop) and it worked fine... in the case of DejaVu (software which I was using which relied on Anacron). I'm not setting the DV scripts in the periodic folder. Maybe DV was moved to launchd, and Anacron is now basically invoking nothing?

Disregard this...

It appears as I have figured out the problem. The problem with the DejaVu scripts not being invoked was a separate, unrelated issue.

However, I did discover the problem with Anacron in Tiger (I think)...

Anacron timestamps are written to /var/spool/anacron. Anacron bases its execution of scripts based on these timestamps. Launchd insists on setting the permissions to this directory so that only root can read these timestamps. Even though the cron process is owned by root, the crontabs themselves are not owned by root, therefore there are permissions errors being written to the console:

Code:
anacron[8091]: Can't open timestamp file for job cron.daily: Permission denied
anacron[8091]: Aborted

A repair of the permissions doesn't solve this problem.

The basic summary of this is that Anacron needs to be evoked by launchd. If you are using the Alastair's Place disk image or installing Anacron from Fink or DarwinPorts, you'll have to wait on getting an upgrade to Anacron to support launchd.

See me for instructions in fixing these problems manually though, if you wish.

[alphasubzero949]

A disk image for Tiger has been put out:

http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html