fixes make_directories to work at any time and integrate the symlink

[astronomerdave]

This allows running a fallback at reboot in case the computer is not powered at noon.

Once merged and built, this requires the following changes:

1. In dataowner's crontab, replace

# create data directories every day at noon
0 12 * * * exec /home/developer/bin/make_directories >/dev/null 2>&1
# then symlink /data/latest to the current /data/YYYYMMDD directory
1 12 * * * /home/developer/Software/run/symlink_latest >/dev/null 2>&1

with

# create data directories. must run at 12:00, before the daemons' 12:01
# log rotation; runs hourly as a fallback
0 * * * * /home/developer/bin/make_directories >/dev/null 2>&1

2. Install a systemd oneshot that runs make_directories after /data is mounted and before the daemons start.

create file /etc/systemd/system/ngps-make-directories.service with

[Unit]
Description=Create /data/YYYYMMDD for the current night
RequiresMountsFor=/data
Before=ngps-daemon.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
User=dataowner
Group=datawriters
UMask=0002
ExecStart=/home/developer/bin/make_directories

[Install]
WantedBy=ngps-daemon.service

then

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable ngps-make-directories.service

[astronomerdave]

This was deployed on 2026-Sep-30 11:30AM