On Tue, 2017-01-03 at 14:43 +0100, Kristýna Streitová wrote:

Hello,

I have a question regarding the behaviour of multiple 'cron -n' processes. It seems that there is a mechanism that prevents running multiple cron daemons simultaneously (acquire_daemonlock() function that locks pidfile when the cron is started). However, this doesn't apply to 'cron -n' command and therefore you can run multiple 'cron -n' processes.

Looking into the code it looks as an intended behaviour but I would like to be sure.

Can you please confirm that being able to run multiple 'cron -n' processes is not a bug?

Yes, there is nothing that prevents you to run multiple 'cron -n' processes, although it is not so much useful as it would make the crontab entries to be also executed multiple times. As the 'cron -n' original and main purpose is debugging it actually makes sense though.

Regards,