cron problems - secure system

[Osiris Guzman]

We are running under an HP 9000 - 11.0 system. A month ago we started having problems with some cron jobs starting new cron daemons. When I look at the log, I'm getting a rc = 1, or ts = 9 attached to jobs that hang and these are the same pids that the new daemons are running under. Does anyone knows what the "ts" means? What causes the cron to generate other crons? or point to into the right direction?

THANK YOU

[Cheryl Griffin]

rc = return code
ts = termination signal

It is why the process died.

[Osiris Guzman]

Where can I find the list of the terminal signal descriptions ? Why does it start new cron daemons instead of just sending an error message to the user?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

# kill -l
# man 5 signal

...JRF...

[Ed Sampson]

Is it your cron process that is restarting, or
your processes that are started by cron? Check for 2 cron processes running, there should only be one process with a parent id of 1.

[Osiris Guzman]

There is only one cron started by 1, but the others
are started bye the cron process:

root 7227 1 0 Dec 10 ? 0:02 /usr/sbin/cron
root 3739 7227 255 05:55:00 ? 8:07 /usr/sbin/cron
root 11981 7227 255 20:55:00 ? 206:33 /usr/sbin/cron
root 6473 7227 249 06:45:00 ? 1:37 /usr/sbin/cron
root 762 7227 249 04:45:00 ? 19:02 /usr/sbin/cron
root 3640 7227 255 05:50:00 ? 8:41 /usr/sbin/cron
root 12794 7227 249 21:05:00 ? 201:40 /usr/sbin/cron

[Ed Sampson]

The only way that cron could start another cron, is if it is in the root crontab file.
check your root crontab file for a cron entry.
If you don't find one, check your other crontab files for the "cron" entry.
As root try
grep cron /var/spool/cron/crontabs/*

Hope this helps.

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi

As this is a recent occurance, when did you last reboot the server? if the answer is before the problem started then try stopping and restarting the cron.

First kill all the child cron jobs (NOT the one with an id of 1).
Then:-

/sbin/init.d/cron stop
/sbin/init.d/cron start

Then monitor how the cron behaves.

HTH

Paula