Bug 652805

Summary:	/usr/bin/run-parts complaining about non-executable file in /etc/cron.hourly
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Jonathan Kamens <h1k6zn2m>
Component:	crontabs	Assignee:	Marcela Mašláňová <mmaslano>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	14	CC:	mmaslano, tmraz
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	crontabs-1.11-1.20101115git.fc14	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2010-11-17 23:23:20 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 Jonathan Kamens 2010-11-12 20:19:28 UTC

I'm getting this error every hour from cron:

  Subject: Cron <root@jik2> run-parts /etc/cron.hourly

  /etc/cron.hourly/hot-backup.sh:

  /usr/bin/run-parts: line 75: /etc/cron.hourly/hot-backup.sh: Permission denied

Making files in /etc/cron.* non-executable to suppress their execution without outright deleting them is a tried and true technique, and one that worked just fine until the recent (like, yesterday) update to the crontabs RPM. Please restore this functionality.

Thank you.

Comment 1 Bas Mevissen 2010-11-15 09:04:08 UTC

As a work around, you could make them hidden. I personally don't think that making scripts non-executable is a good way to suppress their execution.

If you often need to temporary enable or disable cron scripts, consider adding them to roots' crontab where you can easily comment out or uncomment a script.

Comment 2 Marcela Mašláňová 2010-11-15 09:23:05 UTC

Jobs, which should be only temporarily not executed, could be included in jobs.deny. Details in crontabs.4. Anyway I change the behaviour back.

Comment 3 Jonathan Kamens 2010-11-15 11:36:08 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> As a work around, you could make them hidden. I personally don't think that
> making scripts non-executable is a good way to suppress their execution.

I personally don't think that making scripts hidden is a good way to suppress their execution.

Whether or not you think making them non-executable is a good way, it has been done this way for as far back as I can remember, and there are no doubt many, many users and system administrators relying on this behavior, and it makes absolutely no sense to make an arbitrary backward-incompatible change by disabling the functionality.

Comment 4 Tomas Mraz 2010-11-15 11:54:07 UTC

This was not an intentional change and it will be fixed.

Comment 5 Fedora Update System 2010-11-15 14:37:22 UTC

crontabs-1.11-1.20101115git.fc14 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 14.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/crontabs-1.11-1.20101115git.fc14

Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2010-11-15 22:22:03 UTC

crontabs-1.11-1.20101115git.fc14 has been pushed to the Fedora 14 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update crontabs'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/crontabs-1.11-1.20101115git.fc14

Comment 7 Bas Mevissen 2010-11-16 08:43:27 UTC

Update seems OK. Very fast response, tnx!

Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2010-11-17 23:23:15 UTC

crontabs-1.11-1.20101115git.fc14 has been pushed to the Fedora 14 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.