[BlueOnyx:11777] Re: Cron issues

[Tjerk Hacquebord]

Found this on Google for you:
http://kuchinglug.blogspot.nl/2006/03/about-cron-and-annoying-binbash-root.h
tml

Sound like your problem and they mention a solution.. You could try this.


Tjerk


-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: blueonyx-bounces at mail.blueonyx.it
[mailto:blueonyx-bounces at mail.blueonyx.it] Namens Jim Matysek
Verzonden: maandag 10 december 2012 21:33
Aan: BlueOnyx General Mailing List
Onderwerp: [BlueOnyx:11776] Cron issues

Over the weekend a co-worker wanted to add a new script to be run as a cron
job. He forgot how to do this and ran crontab -e from the command prompt
several times before figuring it out. He said that several times a blank
editor came up and at least once the content of the existing /etc/crontab
file came up. Anyway, he ultimately figured out to edit the /etc/crontab
file and then ran /etc/init.d/crond restart and his cron job started
running. The problem is that ever since that time, I (as the server admin)
get an email EVERY time any cron job runs with the following message:

/etc/bash: root: command not found

This happens for all cron jobs - those run through /etc/cron.daily,
cron.hourly, etc. as well as any custom ones we've added to /etc/crontab
without runparts. Now we have two different ones that run every 10 minutes,
so I'm getting a boatload of emails that are driving me nuts. 
The actual script specified in the crontab file runs just fine, but I get
this email anyway. My guess is that somehow a config file somewhere for cron
got modified such that a crontab line like:

30 23 * * * root /home/sites/www.mysite.com/cron/mycronjob.sh

is now being interpreted as two commands to run: first to run the command
"root" and then to run the other command. It seems that somehow the config
has changed to not read the "root" entry as "run this script as root", but
rather a job to run.

Any suggestions for where to look?

We already ran a find from the root directory looking for crontab and didn't
find any new crontab files set up anywhere on the server, just the one at
/etc/crontab (thought maybe a new one was set up with a bad spec in it). I
looked at /etc/init.d/crond and it was last changed on February 22, so that
didn't get changed.  I also re-booted the VPS last night, hoping that cron
would come up fresh from the boot fixed, but no luck there either.

--
Jim Matysek
http://usms.org | FB: http://facebook.com/USMastersSwimmingFanPage

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