Edit crontab rights for a user

[chindi]

Hi ,

Is it possible that i can give rights for a user cron to be running in it .

But he must not be able to edit  or add any new cron entries ?

O.S  hpux 11iv3

[Dennis Handly · Accepted solution]

You might be able to allow a user, set up crontab and then remove.

I'm not sure if cron(1m) checks to see if disallowed, if the crontab entry exists.

It seems to work fine on 11.23.

[Ken Grabowski]

If you just want a cron job to be run to execute a script or program under a given user ID, without allowing them to add or remove from cron, then you should set up the job under root and use "su useID -c script-or-command-to-execute".   The root user owns the cron job and is the only one that can add, change, or delete the job.  The job will be executed under the name user ID.

[chindi]

Thanks Dennis ,

Tested it on 11.23 and 11.31 , it runs fine.

[Dennis Handly]

>The job will be executed under the name user ID.

Hmm, I would think the job runs under root but switches to useID, so the cron mail would go to root.

[Ken Grabowski]

Yes it would.  That may or not be an issue, depending on their requirements.  A well written job will included logging and email alerts/notification aimed at the appropriate individuals.

Cron doesn't give you much in the way of features. If your having to enable and then disable a cron user every time they need to add or remove a job, then you might as well own the process and provide a good script wrapped for the applications people to use.  Thats what I've always done, even when a good cross platform job control system was avalable.