Configurable/selectable type of cron job for the client

[oyvindhagberg]

The client comes with a cron job (installed in cron.hourly) that delays a number of minutes (up to 60) before running the client. The delay is based on a hash of the machine name.
This way, if you have lots of machines, traffic to your server will be evenly distributed throughout each hour.

This might not be desirable for all environments. Perhaps some people want other options.
Ideas:

• Random delay times instead of basing it on the machine name
• All clients should report during the first 10 minutes of every hour

How to configure this? The cron job could be configured with environment variables set through sysconfig.

[oyvindhagberg]

In addition to this, the client should be run at boot time.

[oyvindhagberg]

All of this would be solved if the client ran more often (say, every 5 minutes).

• No need to run at boot, because it would run soon enough after anyway
• Requires that the client looks at file mtime and only sends updates to the server if files have changed
• Commands should be run only once an hour (or configurable) as they may have more impact on the machine. Output should be checksummed and only sent to the server if changed.