Feature proposal: Warn users if Cron is not running

[buhtz]

BIT currently check if crontab is available as a command and warn if it is not. I do propose to extend this check with asking the system if cron is running via ps -eo comm | grep --ignore-case cron.

This is a follow-up of #1737. The problem there was that cron (or cronie) was installed but did not run. The user was able to edit the crontab via crontab -e. But there was no effect because no cron instance was using this crontab file.

This habit of the operating system is one I have heard also in the past. It is annoying and IMHO meaningless. I don't get it why they do install cron(ie) but do not enable it. After discussing this with Arch folks they tell me users are supposed to know it and configuring this like this them self. OK, but how can this help us?

IMHO

A running cron is a dependency of a Back In Time installation. Installing BIT package should activate cron or if the OS don't want to use cron anymore they should remove BIT from their package repository. So here it comes: BIT is not supported by Arch or any Arch-based distribution (e.g. Garuda Arch Linux). Their users do use AUR (which is an low quality risky 3rd-party repository) or Chaotic-AUR. But the users don't know the diff between a well maintained official GNU Linux package repository and something low-quality like AUR. Of course the same goes for 3rd party deb-repositories and PPAs. But on Debian you explicit have to add this repos to your system. But in Arch the whole system is based on such 3rd party repos without the users knowing it. I was told AUR is not active by default.

EDIT: I discussed the issue with Arch-folks on IRC and modified some parts of the "IMHO" section. 😄

EDIT2: I also updated the Arch-wiki page about Back In Time so we can point users to it.