[BlueOnyx:18587] Re: newlinq_cron.pl

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Chris,

> We have a customer that reported receiving a new error message today, 
> and it looks to be generated by /etc/cron.hourly/newlinq_cron.pl
> 
> Is this something new (it appears the file was written 3 days ago)?

Right. I see the problem. We'll fix the NewLinQ PKG and will publish an
update.

The /etc/cron.hourly/newlinq_cron.pl is indeed new. It got added to the
NewLinQ PKG a couple of days ago. It's needed for the cached license
verification of PKGs.

It works like this: The cronjob accesses a page of the new GUI via
localhost. That triggers a license check of all commercial PKGs that are
installed and creates (or updates) the license cache.

The license cache avoids that protected GUI pages (for example of rental
PKGs) need to do an online check with NewLinQ to check your rental
status. Instead the info is read from the cache. Which is also a lot
faster than checking online.

In case the cronjob isn't working these protected GUI pages will do an
online check once and update the cache themselves. That takes around 3-4
seconds, whereas processing from cache just takes milliseconds. The
cache is good for up to 10 days. But for best results the cronjob
refreshes it daily.

The NewLinQ PKG is the same for all BlueOnyx versions. But naturally
only 5207R, 5208R and 5209R have that cache generating GUI page. I had
forgotten to add a check to the cronjob that disables it on older
BlueOnyx. :p

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber