topic Re: crontab file being deleted... in Operating System - HP-UX

crontab file being deleted...

Houston Kemper — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 14:00:28 GMT

Hi all,

I've noticed that after a reboot on an L 2000 that one of my user's crontab files is being deleted from var/spool/crontabs. The crontabs for root, oracle, and adm remain untouched.

Any thoughts? I haven't located anything in the syslog or anywhere else that might shed some light on this matter.

Thanks in advance,

Re: crontab file being deleted...

Patrick Wallek — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 14:04:13 GMT

The first thing that comes to mind is to go through your startup scripts in /sbin/init.d and look for anything related to cron. The cron startup script would probably be the first one I would check. After that you might look for anything that is non-standard (ie. added by an application or manually by someone else). An easy way to look for cron related things would be to do a 'grep -i cron /sbin/init.d/*' and see what comes up.

Another place to look might be /etc/rc.log to see if anything was logged during startup about cron manipulations.

Re: crontab file being deleted...

John Palmer — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 14:08:13 GMT

Can't think of anything except for some sort of housekeeping script checking for files of a particular name (sucs as core).

What is the user name? It may be significant.

Re: crontab file being deleted...

MANOJ SRIVASTAVA — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 14:09:27 GMT

Hi Houston

Also check for the .profile of the users since a simple command like crontab -r can remove the crontba for the user already set it . Grep for crontab and check for the options.

Manoj Srivastava

Re: crontab file being deleted...

Houston Kemper — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 14:26:17 GMT

Hi folks,

All responses have been great and I appreciate your help. I've checked the rc.log and cron starts up without a hitch. The user is called 'pm' for Process Manager for a homegrown application. The only other thing I can think of is that this machine is ServiceGuarded with two other systems. Is it possible that the cluster startup is causing a problem?

Thanks again

Re: crontab file being deleted...

Paula J Frazer-Campbell — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 14:57:21 GMT

Hi
How much space do you have in /var as I had an occurance where var filled up and root cron was cleared.

Just and idea

Paula

Re: crontab file being deleted...

Bill McNAMARA_1 — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 15:03:23 GMT

Make sure that the user is allowed to run cron tasks.
See /etc/cron.allow
(I believe)

Bill