/etc/periodic/daily:

number of jobs: 22 Job Runs by Default What it does 100.clean-disks
NO
Uses find(1) to remove a.out, core dumps (*.core) and some emacs files more than three (3) days old. 110.clean-tmps
NO
Uses find(1) to do some cleanup of temporary files more than three (3) days old.
The comments say:
Use at your own risk, but for a long-living system, this might come more useful than the boot-time cleaning of /tmp. If /var/tmp and /tmp are symlinked together, only one of the below will actually run.
120.clean-preserve
YES
Uses find(1) to remove files in /var/preserve more than 7 days old.
130.clean-msgs
YES
Uses msgs(1) (-c) to remove system messages more than 21 days old.
Note: Documentation is inconsistent. The option used is very easy to miss. 140.clean-rwho
YES
Uses find(1) to removes files from /var/rwho (rwho(1)) that are more than 7 days old. 150.clean-hoststat
- NEW
YES
Uses sendmail(8) (-bH) to remove stale entries from sendmail host status cache. 200.backup-passwd
YES
Backs up passwd(5) and group(5) files, if it is different from the last backup.
Sends root the diff(1). Verifying group file syntax with chkgrp(8).
210.backup-aliases
YES
Backs up mail aliases(5) (/etc/aliases). 220.backup-distfile
YES
Backs up /etc/distfile, part of rdist(1).
See Also: 320.rdist.
NOTE: distfile is documented in rdist(1), not section 5. 300.calendar
NO
Processes the calender(1) files for all users and mail the result to them.
The comments say:
`calendar -a' needs to die. Why? Because it's a bad idea, particular networked home directories, but also in general. If you want the of `calendar' mailed to you, set up a cron job to do it, run it from your ~/.profile or ~/.login.
I disagree. Earlier, it seemed to have problems. Now it looks okay. However, the documentation is still fuzzy.
NOTE:calendar user file format should be in section five (5), but it is described in calender(1). 310.accounting
YES
Rotates accounting logs in /var/account/ and gathers statistics sa(8)(-s). Three (3) days worth of accounting are kept, and no compression (gzip(1)(-f)) is used by default. The compression tool NOT configurable.
320.rdist
YES
Runs rdist(1)(-f) to distribute files as outlined by /etc/Distfile.
NOTE: Distfile is documented in rdist(1), not section 5. 330.news
YES
Expires "news" articles - This is present only for backwards compatibility, usually "news" handles this on its own.
Note: This script runs /etc/news.expires, which does not exists by default, so it silently fails.
news.expires is not documented. It is assumed this is application specific, since there are so many different programs that do "news". 340.uucp
YES
Local cleanup of UUCP files. This is for backwards compatibility. /etc/uuclean.daily doesn't exist by default, so it silently fails.
Note: It is not clear to this author if UUCP is still in general use. uuclean.daily is not documented. 400.status-disks
YES
Reports filesystems capacity df(1)(-k -t nofs), except NFS mounts. Reports files needing dumping by doing dump(8)(-W) (which reads from /etc/dumpdates). /etc/dumpdates is empty by default, so the second part of this script really does nothing.
NOTE: dumpdates is documented in dump(1) under the -u option, not section 5. 410.status-uucp
YES
UUCP status - uustat(1)(-a). 420.status-network
YES
Network interface status netstat(1)(-i). 430.status-rwho
YES
Local network system status (ruptime(1)) OR Local system status (uptime(1)).
NOTE: Since /var/rwho contains no files ruptime(1) does not get run. 440.status-mailq
YES
Prints a summary of mail messages queued for future delivery.
NOTE: Uses perl(1), sort(1), uniq(1), sort(1) and awk(1). 450.status-security
YES
Security check
Runs periodic(8) security that:
NOTE: Formerly, this ran as a single script, now it has it's own formal directory and multiple scripts. 460.status-mail-rejects
YES
Check for rejected mail hosts in /var/log/maillog and any archived log files. 470.status-named
- NEW
YES
Checks for denied zone transfers (AXFR and IXFR) 500.queuerun
- NEW
YES
Actually sends emails waiting in the queue to be sent using sendmail(8)(-Ac -q). 999.local
YES
Run the old /etc/daily.local script. This is really for backwards more than anything else.