RPM dependency on cron

[Benny Amorsen]

We have a lot of virtualized (OpenVZ) Fedora servers. Until now I have
avoided running cron inside each server; log rotation is done from the
host.

This has worked rather well until lately. Unfortunately rpm has acquired
a dependency on crontabs, because it adds a file to /etc/cron.daily. In
turn, crontabs depends on /etc/cron.d, which is provided by cronie.
cronie explicitly depends on anacron. And thus, anacron and cronie are
required for all Fedora installations.

The really nasty thing is that cronie turns itself on when installed! I
suddenly had an extra logrotate running which rotated logs in a way not
consistent with our policy.

I'm not sure where it's easiest to cut this chain. I'd be tempted to
make crontabs provide /etc/cron.d and make cronie depend on crontabs.
That way rpm would pull in crontabs but nothing more.


/Benny