# $Id: README,v 1.7 2002/11/14 16:22:47 ksb Prod $

What kicker is:
---------------

This little program is kind-of-a like a limitted reverse "op".  It puts
any command it finds from its database in the batch queue under the
user that owns the command.  So it must run from root's crontab,
and/or from the system startup/shutdown scripts.

Note: on (broken) UNIX flavors where one can give away files this
is really insecure.  And the spool directories (/var/kicker/00 and the
like) should be sticky (mode 1777 or 1775).  For this reason the default
mode is 02775 root:adm in the Makefile. 

See kicker.sh for the init.d script; see kicker.cron for the fragment for
root's crontab (/etc/crontab for Vixie cron).  There is an mk directive
in the init.d script to install on a Sun.


Why kicker is a good idea:
--------------------------

I don't mean to sound too negative here: 5 people editing a single crontab
file on many hosts is a tragic accident in the works.  Revision control
with the crontab(1) command is hard to do at best, and impossible for most.

Kicker allows you to use CVS (or RCS) to manage the tasks in the control
queue as separately revised objects.  That helps a lot.  It even lets
you use install(1) or installus(1) on them, as of version 1.11.

More to the point multiple developers do not have to co-operate on a
single file's contents.

--
ksb