Several packages have dropped cronjobs in favour of systemd timers
or somesuch, despite these not being covered by the GR about init
scripts.

The release notes should contain a complete list of all packages
that did that, so that affected sysadmins (even systemd users who
prefer to keep using crond) can add back the proper cronjobs (there
was a mention of a tool to autogenerate them from the systemd units
on the init-diversity mailing list, which (anyway) I Cc’d in this
bug, so they can chime in).

Thorsten,

Thanks for raising this important issue.

utrans[1] can produce cron or xinetd fragments from timer units. It can also
produce LSB initscripts or openrc runscripts from service and socket units.

[1]  https://tracker.debian.org/utrans

Mark

 if someone provides a list of which packages did this, i can help
write the text. I assume this should exclude packages that added a
timer and made the cron-job do nothing if /run/systemd/system was
present -- most packages did that, i think

(to me, there doesnt seem any point in including a generic statement
about this in the release-notes without a list of packages: systemd is
already the default so this issue will only affect people who have
chosen to use something else and who are, presumably, more likely to
be more aware that there is a risk of this.