The trouble with starting every cfagent at the same time using a global
cron file is that it might lead to contention or inefficiency. For
instance, if a hundred cfagents all suddenly wanted to copy a file from
a master source simultaneously this would lead to a big load on the
server. We can prevent this from happening by introducing a time delay
which is unique for each host and not longer than some given interval.
Cfagent uses a hashing algorithm to generate a number between zero
and a maximum value in minutes which you define, like this:
# Put this in update.conf, so that the updates are also splayed
control:
SplayTime = ( 10 ) # minutes
If this number is non-zero, cfagent goes to sleep after parsing its
configuration file and reading the clock. Every machine will go to sleep
for a different length of time, which is no longer than the time you
specify in minutes. A hashing algorithm, based on the fully qualified
name of the host, is used to compute a unique time for hosts. The
shorter the interval, the more clustered the hosts will be. The longer
the interval, the lighter the load on your servers. This `splaying' of
the run times will lighten the load on servers, even if they come
from domains not under your control but have a similar cron policy.
Splaying can be switched off temporarily with the `-q' or `--no-splay'
options.
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