crontab owner and permission

[Bernard M. dela Vega]

Hello,

I have a HP-UX 11.11

I have two question regarding the file in the /var/spool/cron/crontabs/ directory.

1. Who should the owner be of the files because all of the files has root as the owner?

2. What should the permission be? The current permission for the files are r-- --- --- ?

I attached a file of the output.

I would appreciate your feedback/advises.

Regards.

[Jon Mattatall · Accepted solution]

Relax, all is as it should be.

root is the owner of all the files in /var/spool/cron/crontabs, and r-------- is fine.

Users (if allowed) must use crontab -e to change the contents, and you can't edit the files directly. Read to owner is sufficient.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi,

1) root SHOULD be the owner, BUT the group ownership should be the primary group of the user who "owns" the cron entry.

2) 400 or r-------- IS the proper permissions.

This works because /usr/bin/crontab is an SUID binary. The perms keep unauthorized users from manually editing the file.

HTH,
Jeff

[James A. Donovan]

Your configuration looks fine.

1. The owner of the file should be root, the group should be the primary group of the "owner" of the crontab.

2. The permissions on the files should all be 400, readable only by root.

[Paul Sperry]

Your listing looks normal to me

[Elena Leontieva]

I believe your ownership and permissions are correct. Each user who is allowed to run cron jobs is accessing this file through 'crontab' command.
Elena.

[Helen French]

Your settings are correct:

1) Root will be the owner. But your user should be included in the "group" specified for the crontab file.

2) The permission (r------) is okay too since it's a security reason. The SUID and Group ID comes in picture when you actally access the file.

[Hai Nguyen_1]

What you have observed are correct settings. The permission of a cron is always r-- --- ---. The owner of a cron file is always root. The group is the one which the named file (the actual owner of the cron) belongs to.

Hai

[Dario_1]

Hi!

Do not change anything. They are the way they are supposed to be.

Regards,

DR

[Leandro Lucena]

Hello,

This is correct. r-- --- --- is the correct permition of this file and root MUST be the owner of this.

Regards, Leandro

[Caesar_3]

Hello!

You permitions and owner looks like mine
so it's Ok and should work!
Do you have problem with the cron ?
Check if it's running, you also have verbs
mode that will give you more information.
You can also check syslog

Caesar