More ubuntu weirdness

1. Ubuntu is set up to use anacron, but the /etc/crontab is set up to not run the /etc/cron.daily stuff if anacron is installed by surrounding the normal “run-parts /etc/cron.daily” with “test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ()”. Which is unnecessary because there is already a “0anacron” file in /etc/cron.daily to update the anacron timestamp if it’s being run out of cron instead of anacron. This means that there is no way I can get the /etc/cron.daily stuff to run at night when the system is idle instead of at 7am when I’m reading my morning email. I had to change the runtime in /etc/crontab to 3am, and delete the anacron checking. We’ll see tomorrow if that helps.
2. Ubuntu installs findutils and slocate. findutils has an /etc/cron.daily job called “find” that runs updatedb. slocate installs its own updatedb and moves the findutils one to updatedb.notslocate. It has an /etc/cron.daily job called “slocate” that also runs updatedb. The slocate deb file moves /etc/cron.daily/find, but instead of doing something useful like moving it where it won’t get executed, or updating it so that it runs the findutils version of updatedb, it just renames it to /etc/cron.daily/find.notslocate. So slocate’s updatedb gets run twice every night. That’s pretty useless.

I’m getting the impression that Ubuntu, in spite of all the hype, is a pretty damn amateurish operation.