crontab entry environment variables [PSARC/2007/503 FastTrack

[Pete Bentley]

Richard L. Hamilton wrote:
> Finally, a way (and this could be either via /etc/default/cron or
> via another variable in the crontab) to optionally specify an alternative, more
> descriptive subject line for such email might be nice, esp. if it could be
> subjected to some printf-like substitutions, one of which should be the
> nodename (cron email from multiple systems can sometimes only be
> distinguished by inspecting the Received: headers, which is very ugly).

+1

Pretty much every large site ends up with their own wrapper script to do 
this, but it would be nice to simplify it to a few default or environment 
variables.


While we're throwing out wishes, the "step values" allowed by some other 
cron's (eg "*/2") would be handy. I think that one might need an 
"enable_extensions" knob though as it has the potential to break any script 
that parses crontabs.

Pete.