Bug 130996

Summary: crond crashes intermittently - need debug help
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Terry <td3201>
Component: vixie-cronAssignee: Jason Vas Dias <jvdias>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: vixie-cron-4.1-+ Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2005-06-02 00:15:02 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Terry 2004-08-26 15:14:29 UTC
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Description of problem:
Crond seems to crash intermittently.  I need some help obtaining debug
information to post.  Simply starting it with the service command puts
me back in business.

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


How reproducible:
Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Start crond
2.  Wait for crash ( can't give amount of time
3.  Restart it
    

Additional info:

Comment 1 Jason Vas Dias 2004-08-26 15:47:46 UTC
 You should really upgrade to FC2 - FC1 has been "retired" .
 You are running vixie-cron-3.0.1-76 ?
 vixie-cron-4.1-FC2_3 is the latest recommended version for Fedora.
 If you can't upgrade,  or you upgrade and the crash still occurs,
 please do the following : 
 $ grep crond /var/log messages | tail -10 > /tmp/cron_crash.log
 $ tail -10 /var/log/cron >> /tmp/cron_crash.log
 and attach the resulting cron_crash.log file to this bug - that
 should give us a way to start determining the problem.

Comment 2 Terry 2004-08-26 16:23:59 UTC
I have already checked messages for goofy errors and am not getting
any.  Can I enable a debug level in crond somehow?  I can't apply that
latest RPM because FC1 doesnt have SELINUX support.

Comment 3 Jason Vas Dias 2004-08-26 17:05:55 UTC
Is there any reason not to upgrade to FC2 ? 
You can see exactly what's happening as follows - as root:
$ service crond stop
$ ulimit -c unlimited
$ cd /var/spool
$ crond -nx 'ext,sch,proc,pars,load,misc,test,bit' 2>&1 | tee
/tmp/cron_dbg.log
(all on one line).
This will run crond in the foreground, so you won't get another
prompt until it exits.
Then wait for the crash - how long does it take? - and then do:
$ gzip -9 /tmp/cron_dbg.log 
and append the resulting /tmp/cron_dbg.log.gz file to this bug .
If there is a 'core.*' file in the /var/spool directory, please
also compress! the latest! core.* file and append the core.gz to
this bug.  

Comment 4 Terry 2004-08-26 17:58:42 UTC
This is a UML box so upgrading is pretty much starting over.  It
hasn't crashed yet since I last started it so That probably won't
work.  I need to find out how often this is happening.

Comment 5 Jason Vas Dias 2004-08-26 20:06:11 UTC
OK, well if you don't mind a huge /var/log/messages file, do this:
1. Enable core dumps: edit /etc/profile to say:
# No core files by default
# ulimit -S -c 0 > /dev/null 2>&1
ulimit -c unlimited >/dev/null 2>&1
2. Edit /etc/init.d/crond - where it says "daemon crond" in start(),
   make it say:
   daemon crond -x 'ext,sch,proc,pars,load,misc,test,bit'&

All the debug info will now appear in /var/log/messages,
and if crond cores, the corefile will be in /var/spool.

To find out how often it happens, create a cron job:
'* * * * *  /bin/date>>/tmp/cron.alive.txt'
The last date & time string written to /tmp/cron.alive.txt
will be the last time cron ran its jobs.

This really doesn't happen with current version ! 
I'll work on getting a update to vixie-cron-4.1 out to
Fedora 1 & 2 updates.


Comment 6 Jason Vas Dias 2005-06-02 00:15:02 UTC
Just clearing out old bugs here. This one is definitely no longer a
problem.