[Popcon-developers] Bug#265456: popularity-contest: should run at other time than sunday morning

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

> (Debian) Desktop computers are often off-state at sunday 6:47 am
> when cron.weekly executes popcon report. By default Debian doesn't
> install anacron which prevents many desktop computers from
> participation. If you want more information about desktop computers
> you should change the time popcon report runs.

People turning off their computers will do so at random times.  I see
no way to predict which time are more likely to leave a computer
running, and believe this issue need to be fixed elsewere.  If we
can't depend on cron to run weekly jobs once a week, there is no way
to know if the job is executed at all.

Because of this, I believe it is a bad idea to change the run time for
popcon believing that it will increase the chances of the job being
executed by more machines.  Perhaps desktop machines and laptops
should get anacron installed by default instead?