For regular maintenance items that need to be done on the PingDirectory Server, recurring tasks and task chains can be created with the dsconfig create-recurring-task command. These tasks can be created to perform regular backups, LDIF exports, enter and exit lockdown mode, or other static operations. Because this process is owned by the server, tasks do not require special priviledges or credentials, and they can be run when the server is offline. Tasks are created and then added to a recurring task chain for scheduling. The task chain insures that that invocations of a task or set of tasks run in a specified order and cannot overlap.

A recurring task includes:

  • The task-specific object classes to include in the task entry.
  • The task-specific attributes to include in the task entry, if any.
  • Whether to alert on task start, success, and/or failure.
  • Any addresses to email on task start, success, and/or failure.
  • Whether to cancel an instance of the task if it is dependent upon another task, and that task does not complete successfully.

Once a task is created, one or more tasks can be added to and scheduled with a task chain with the dsconfig create-recurring-task-chain command. A recurring task chain includes:

  • An ordered list of the tasks to invoke.
  • The months, days, times, and time zones in which the task can be scheduled to start.
  • The behavior to exhibit if any of the tasks are interrupted by a server shutdown.
  • The behavior to exhibit if the server is offline when the start time occurs.