From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-DE; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050321 Firefox/1.0.2 Description of problem: We're using a system CVS to track configuration changes properly. cron isn't smart enough during running through its spool directories and shows a strange message in logging (which also logwatch doesn't know) Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): vixie-cron-4.1-20_EL and below How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. create CVS directory in /var/spool/cron and/or /etc/cron.d 2. take a look into /var/log/cron and/or daily logwatch result Actual Results: /var/log/cron: Mar 24 15:06:01 host crond[6117]: (*system*) NOT REGULAR (/etc/cron.d/CVS) Mar 24 15:06:01 host crond[6117]: (CVS) ORPHAN (no passwd entry) logwatch result: **Unmatched Entries** NOT REGULAR (/etc/cron.d/CVS) Expected Results: cron is skipping at least a CVS directory. Additional info: Same issue already went up with up2date: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=114322 MAKEDEV: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=150766
cron expects every entry in its /etc/cron.d directory to be a crontab file, and correctly warns you if it detects that an entry in that directory is not a regular file or a crontab . Solution: do not create directories in the /etc/cron.d directory.