chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us (j chapman flack) (05/24/91)
In article <1174@pemcom.pem-stuttgart.de> ralfi@pemcom.pem-stuttgart.de (Ralf U. Holighaus) writes: > >Ever heard of the crontab command? That correctly updates the cron tables >in the /usr/spool/cron/crontabs directory WITHOUT problems. Thats the clean >way. Not the quick'n dirty one. Try su'ing to the ID of a pseudo-user and using crontab to update that user's cron table. You can't do it. "You must run crontab under your login UID." A pseudo-user is, by definition, an account that no human ever logs directly into. To do something as a pseudo-user, a person has to log into an individual account and su to the pseudo-user, which leaves an audit trail. This is correct and sensible. Because crontab is broken, an individual who wants to update a pseudo-user's cron table must actually log in as that pseudo-user (there goes accountability) or manually replace the cron table. In the second case, the revisions will not take effect until cron restarts at the next reboot, because crontab is what signals cron to reread the table, and the user couldn't run it. And no, running crontab on the user's own table will not tell cron to reread all of the tables. o= The maddening thing is that the feature that breaks crontab, and is clearly counter to the design of the LUID and pseudo-user concepts, is something that was consciously added (i.e. and act of commission, not of omission) by someone unclear on the concept. -= -- Chap Flack Their tanks will rust. Our songs will last. chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us -MIKHS 0EODWPAKHS Nothing I say represents Appropriate Roles for Technology unless I say it does.
sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) (05/25/91)
In article <9105241152.aa10661@art-sy.detroit.mi.us> chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us (j chapman flack) writes: >Try su'ing to the ID of a pseudo-user and using crontab to update that user's >cron table. You can't do it. "You must run crontab under your login UID." You know, it's really amusing watching people post incorrect information. Only slightly less amusing than that is watching people post outdated information. Read my photons: if you get the C2 SLS "fixit" disk from SCO, you will not have that problem. Period. End of discussion. I applied it, on kithrup, as soon as I found out about it (which was about two weeks after it was made available, dammit, gotta do something about that internal communication network 8-)), and immediately star'red out the uucp and news accounts. Yet, I continue to modify their crontab files. -- Sean Eric Fagan | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; sef@kithrup.COM | I had a bellyache at the time." -----------------+ -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_) Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
erik@gogoman.sf.ca.us (Erik Fortune) (05/25/91)
In article <9105241152.aa10661@art-sy.detroit.mi.us> chap@art-sy.detroit.mi.us (j chapman flack) writes: >Try su'ing to the ID of a pseudo-user and using crontab to update that user's >cron table. You can't do it. "You must run crontab under your login UID." Hmm. I just munged the crontabs of sys, news and a couple of others while su'ed on ODT1.1. As stated earlier, I don't have to su, even. crontab -u <user> works just fine. -- Erik