[CentOS] Chicken and egg question: passwd and cronjob

Fri Jun 24 12:10:53 UTC 2011
Michael Gliwinski <Michael.Gliwinski at henderson-group.com>

On Thursday 23 Jun 2011 08:54:21 Fajar Priyanto wrote:
> > AFAIK, account does not need to have a password at all for cron to work.
> > 
> > Apart from that if you're going to automatically reset root's password
> > you may as well just avoid expiring it at all.
> 
> In /var/log/cron I see this when the password expires. And cronjob fail to
> run.
> 
> Jun 23 02:50:01 my-srv crond[4424]: CRON (root) ERROR: failed to open
> PAM security session: Success
> Jun 23 02:50:01 my-srv crond[4424]: CRON (root) ERROR: cannot set
> security context
> Jun 23 03:00:01 my-srv crond[4425]: Authentication token is no longer
> valid; new one required

What does your /etc/pam.d/crond and /etc/pam.d/system-auth look like?  Also, 
what version of CentOS is it?

Must admit, I'm not sure about the password expiring, but I just tested it on 
disabled accounts (both local and Kerberos/LDAP) and it works.


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Michael Gliwinski
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