Description of problem: crond dies silently after an ldap-user edited his crontab-file with the "crontab -e" command and the job is executed for the first time. Excerpt from the logfile /var/log/cron: ---snip--- Sep 12 09:33:15 de-edit2 crontab[12282]: (tinfot) BEGIN EDIT (tinfot) Sep 12 09:33:18 de-edit2 crontab[12282]: (tinfot) REPLACE (tinfot) Sep 12 09:33:18 de-edit2 crontab[12282]: (tinfot) END EDIT (tinfot) Sep 12 09:34:01 de-edit2 crond[1673]: nss_ldap: reconnecting to LDAP server... Sep 12 09:34:02 de-edit2 crond[1673]: nss_ldap: reconnected to LDAP server after 1 attempt(s) Sep 12 09:34:02 de-edit2 crond[12308]: (tinfot) CMD (/opt/tinfo/bin/copy_monitoring_data.sh) Sep 12 10:06:38 de-edit2 crond[13413]: (CRON) STARTUP (V5.0) ---snip--- Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): vixie-cron-4.1-11.EL3 How reproducible: every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. setup ldap-login 2. login to your server 3. edit your cronjobs 4. wait, cron dies after first execution of the job Actual results: crond dies Expected results: crond lives happily and executes the jobs as we tell him Additional info: none
Should be OK in RHEL-5, I'll propose it for next release RHEL-3.
Is there a workaround for this?
See #64379 ie. work-around: stop crond, start nscd if not already running, start crond.
will there be an update in the near future? we don't want to use the nscd here.
This problem will be resolved in a future major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat does not currently plan to provide a resolution for this in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update for currently deployed systems.
So the issue exists, we know how to fix it but Red Hat is refusing to fix it for a current, supported OS (RHEL-3)?
No problem. Given the recent news, I'm certain that if RH doesn't fix this fairly major bug that Oracle would be happy to step up and provide support.
could you at least provide an SRPM and version where you fixed this so that others can try to roll the fix into older versions?
It's already fixed in higher version. SRPMs are on mirrors of RHEL-5/FC-5/FC-6. I recommend you to use higher version of vixie-cron with new features (4:4.1-58+).
ok, great... and please could you explain why you don't release an update for an supported OS like RHEL3/4?