Hiya all,
just found an odd one on one of our boxes, cron isnt working (for a user anyway, but can't seem to get it running properly at all), i.e if I do a crontab -e as a user (who is in /var/spool/cron) and add 19 10 * * * /bin/touch /home/logadmin/testfile (has permission) its never created. Also I get no mails from cron to /var/spool/mail/root so guessing maybe cron not working at all, can't find any errors in logfiles relating to it either.
ps -ef shows crond running however, have tried restarting it via service crond restart which shows fine in logs as started
Not sure what else to check?
Any ideas much appreciated,
Ian
On 25/09/06, Ian mu mu.llamas@gmail.com wrote:
Is there an entry in /etc/cron.deny for the user? Does /var/spool/cron/logadmin look OK?
You could try attaching strace to the running crond process with -f to see if that provides any insights.
Will.
Hiya, thanks for that Wil, gives me some ideas. I notice the Bad file descriptor error in there, I've pasted the part there it starts to run it below (I'm only using touch as a basic test as other cron entries don't work, touch outside of cron works fine). I'm a bit clueless looking at the rest really though, is it definitely the bad file descriptor thats causing it, and any ideas why as its fine outside of cron?
read(6, "03 11 * * * /bin/touch /home/log"..., 4096) = 47 lseek(6, 47, SEEK_SET) = 47 read(6, "", 4096) = 0 read(6, "", 4096) = 0 close(6) = 0 munmap(0x2a9556c000, 4096) = 0 close(6) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor) getdents64(5, /* 0 entries */, 4096) = 0 close(5) = 0 time(NULL) = 1159179661 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD], [], 8) = 0 rt_sigaction(SIGCHLD, NULL, {0x552aaad780, [], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0x2a959b7410}, 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0 nanosleep({60, 0}, <unfinished ...>
On 9/25/06, Will McDonald wmcdonald@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/06, Ian mu mu.llamas@gmail.com wrote:
It looks to me like crond is opening your crontab file OK, it appears to have read the line then choked on something.
Which editor are you using to edit the crontab? I wonder if it's something weird in the CR/LF sequences? You could try running dos2unix on /var/spool/cron/logadmin ? Could it possibly be SELinux? Have you got SELinux enabled?
I'd also check the extended attributes of all files and directories invoved in case something's out there (use "lsattr").
Will.
Hiya, thanks a lot for that Will (sorry spelt name wrong before!), think you're reply has almost got there...
If I dos2unix the file it works, if I use vi/m (what I normally use) or nano etc, it doesn't work (but will if I then dos2unix it again)?
SELinux I think is on permissive/targeted (I'm not too familiar with selinux as someone else set it up, but my understanding is that it should allow all, but log/audit it?).
Looks like thats it, but not sure still why its not saving it correctly?
Thanks, Ian
(lsattr shows ------------- logadmin btw)
On 9/25/06, Will McDonald wmcdonald@gmail.com wrote:
On 25/09/06, Ian mu mu.llamas@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like vi/vim's doing something weird to the file on write/save. Have you any user specific initialisation in the user whose crontab you're editing's $HOME? i.e. If you're setting up the crontab for logadmin, whilst logged in *as* logadmin, is there a $HOME/.vimrc file or similar?
If you just run vi/vim without passing it any files to edit then do
:set
... what does that result it? On a vanilla system here with vim-enhanced installed and no customisations, running vi I get...
:set --- Options --- backspace=2 history=50 ttyfast t_Sf=^[[3%dm cscopetag hlsearch ttymouse=xterm cscopeverbose ruler viminfo='20,"50 helplang=en scroll=11 t_Sb=^[[4%dm cscopeprg=/usr/bin/cscope fileencodings=utf-8,latin1 Hit ENTER or type command to continue
Compare that to what you get by default and what you get when you run crontab -e. If I run crontab -e then examine vi's environment it's just...
:set --- Options --- backspace=2 history=50 scroll=11 ttyfast fileencoding=utf-8 fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,latin1 Hit ENTER or type command to continue
Will.
Hiya, thanks again, there's no .vimrc file at all.
:set gives :set --- Options --- backspace=2 history=50 scroll=11 ttyfast fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,latin1 Hit ENTER or type command to continue
This is exactly the same as in crontab -e (thats what I use to edit anyway though, so assume it just calls vim), it was also the same problem in nano when I tried after you mentioned that.
Thanks, Ian
On 9/25/06, Will McDonald wmcdonald@gmail.com wrote:
Actually it seems to be the same now even when I dos2unix now (seems to work sometimes not others which is confusing me even more now), wondering if its selinux after all even though afaik it shouldn't be.
On 9/25/06, Ian mu mu.llamas@gmail.com wrote:
I had this exact problem. As best as I was able to figure it out, it was caused by the upgrade to CentOS 4.4. A few of the files from the cron RPM didn't work right under the SELinux, I had to do a restoreconf to all the files in the cron RPM and then all was OK. I have no idea why this happened.
Matt
Ian mu wrote:
Hiya Matt, interesting thanks. Does it matter what setting you have selinux on? (have it on permissive atm, but wondering if its still affecting it).
Ian
On 9/26/06, Matthew T. O'Connor matthew@zeut.net wrote:
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Ian mu -
Matthew T. O'Connor -
Scott Silva -
Will McDonald