HOWTO vixie-cron notes
Reducing /var/log/messages Clutter
On a hardened gentoo machine, the main /var/log/messages file becomes hugely cluttered with the minute-by-minute cron messages. They are far too verbose :-( Cut down on the clutter by editing and adding the red/bold change:
hostname ~ # emacs -nw /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf filter f_auth { facility(auth); }; filter f_authpriv { facility(auth, authpriv); }; filter f_syslog { not facility(authpriv, mail); }; filter f_cron { facility(cron); }; filter f_daemon { facility(daemon); }; filter f_kern { facility(kern); }; filter f_lpr { facility(lpr); }; filter f_mail { facility(mail); }; filter f_user { facility(user); }; filter f_uucp { facility(uucp); }; #filter f_ppp { facility(ppp); }; filter f_news { facility(news); }; filter f_debug { not facility(auth, authpriv, news, mail); }; filter f_messages { level(info..warn) and not facility(auth, authpriv, mail, news, cron); }; filter f_emergency { level(emerg); };
Minute-by-minute cron messages are still logged, but only to /var/log/cron.log, not the main /var/log/messages file. Sanity is restored :-)
For Reference, here are a couple of example syslog-ng.conf files:
Typical hardened syslog-ng.conf
Typical workstation syslog-ng.conf
Gentoo Daily Sync
Add these lines to your /etc/crontab file:
# Every morning at 1:18am (randomly chosen!) I sync with a gentoo mirror 18 1 * * * root /usr/bin/emerge --sync > /dev/null 2>&1 ; prelink -amvfR > /dev/null 2>&1
If you admin several servers, watch out that you don't exceed your rsync-server maximum connection limit! Stagger the sync-times amongst your machines, to spread the load.
The prelink portion is really only useful for a workstation; omit for a server.