From the PERIODIC(8) man page:The periodic utility is intended to be called by cron(8) to execute shell       scripts located in the specified directory.One or more of the following arguments must be specified: daily    Perform the standard daily periodic executable run.  This usu-          ally occurs early in the morning (local time). weekly   Perform the standard weekly periodic executable run.  This usu-          ally occurs very early on Saturday mornings.Why does it say for weekly, for example, that it usually occurs very early on Saturday mornings?  Is it suggesting that the user set the cron-job for periodic weekly to be very early on Saturday mornings?
If the periodic utility is intended to be called by cron, why does the man page imply that periodic has its own timing?
cron;freebsd;bsd
Your /etc/crontab file contains lines like this, by default:# Perform daily/weekly/monthly maintenance.1       3       *       *       *       root    periodic daily15      4       *       *       6       root    periodic weekly30      5       1       *       *       root    periodic monthlyObviously, 4:15 AM Saturdays is only one of the many possible times which could be set for your weekly maintenance. The documentation isn't suggesting anything to me other than the fact that most people do not alter the default settings for these cron jobs, hence the jobs usually run at their default times.