Bug 1108384

Summary: cron daemon fails to log that it is shutting down.
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Reporter: Evan Rempel <erempel>
Component: cronieAssignee: Tomas Mraz <tmraz>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Robin Hack <rhack>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 6.5CC: emajorsi, psklenar, rhack, tmraz
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Reopened
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: cronie-1.4.4-14.el6 Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
The crond daemon now logs shutdowns. Its proper terminations are therefore distinguishable from abnormal ones.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of:
: 1207096 (view as bug list) Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-03-19 12:31:46 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Evan Rempel 2014-06-11 22:08:32 UTC
Description of problem:

The cron daemon fails to log that it is shutting down.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

All Redhat 6 platforms

How reproducible:

Steps to Reproduce:
1. /sbin/service crond stop
2. review the syslog

Actual results:

Nothing in the syslog regarding the shutdown.

Expected results:

A log line similar to the startup line should be logged.

2014-06-11T15:05:52-07:00 local.uvic.ca cron.info crond[25689]: (CRON) STARTUP (1.4.4)


Additional info:

This problem also exists in Redhat 5.

2014-06-11T15:07:54-07:00 local.uvic.ca cron.info crond[13998]: (CRON) STARTUP (V5.0)

Comment 2 Marcela Mašláňová 2014-09-04 11:43:56 UTC
How would log of stopping the daemon helped? Children of crond will be executed anyway if they already started. I don't think it's a good feature, because it won't tell you if jobs were executed or not. Tracking jobs is different issue, but I wouldn't do from cron something more complicated than it is.

Comment 3 Evan Rempel 2014-09-04 21:49:25 UTC
The issue arises when attempting to monitor activity on a system and feed the logs into a SIEM or other reporting engine. Stopping of the crond process used to log that it was stopping, but no longer does.

Nearly all daemons log when they start and when they stop. crond should do the same.

2014-09-04 14:47:28 localhostcron.info crond[27874]: (CRON) STARTUP (V5.0)

crond logs when it starts, and it should log when it stops.

Comment 4 Tomas Mraz 2014-09-16 14:00:28 UTC
To help to prioritize the issue please report it through the regular Red Hat support channels.

http://www.redhat.com/support

Comment 8 errata-xmlrpc 2015-03-19 12:31:46 UTC
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-0704.html