Dear Maintainer,

I'm having troubles monitoring what happens during the cron.daily process.
While a --time option (see bug#282553) might help, I got the feeling that
after some trials I'd have to tweak it further.  So, for maximum flexibility,
I turned to -A and -B which allow a user-supplied utility to be called
after or before each script execution.  Such utility can log the time, but also
examine various other things.

I add a patch for run-parts.c and run-parts.8.

I have now changed the daily crontab line like so:

test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report -A trace-run-parts -B trace-run-parts /etc/cron.daily )

Where trace-run-parts reads as follows:

#! /bin/bash
#
# Run as options -A, -B of run-parts cron.daily

msg=""
if [ "$2" ]; then
	action="finished"
	if [ "$2" != "0" ]; then
		msg=", exit code $2"
	fi
else
	action="starting"
fi

logger -t 'run-parts daily' -p daemon.info "$action $1$msg"

This allowed me to understand the reasons of an error.  Nevertheless, I'll keep this customization because I like the way the daemon.log gets framed, cutting out what parts belong to the end-of-day process.

I hope this patch will be added to future releases, so as to avoid losing processes due to "Try `run-parts --help' for more information.\n" after upgrades.

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
debianutils, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1131375@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumitrescu95@gmail.com> (supplier of updated debianutils package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:54:35 +0300
Source: debianutils
Architecture: source
Version: 5.24
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumitrescu95@gmail.com>
Changed-By: Ileana Dumitrescu <ileanadumitrescu95@gmail.com>
Closes: 1131363 1131375
Changes:
 debianutils (5.24) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * d/control: Bump standards version from 4.7.2 to 4.7.4, bump
     debhelper-compat version from 13 to 14, and remove redundant
     field, Rules-Requires-Root: no.
   * acinclude.m4: Update DEBIANUTILS_VERSION to 5.24.
   * run-parts.c: Recognise short option for --debug (Closes: #1131363).
   * run-parts: Add options -A, --after and -B, --before for greater
     flexibility (Closes: #1131375).
   * d/tests/run-parts.test: Extend testing of run-parts for new options.
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 8748ed38f4a18ea04be9574ec2e9cd9002f21879 83012 debianutils_5.24.tar.xz
 c3ad85476074ae10cde4d62d4162567f0db772bc 6258 debianutils_5.24_amd64.buildinfo
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