weirdness in the cron log

bl0tt0 · 03-09-2006, 04:25 PM

I just got into reading through the logs so I could learn a little bit more about what was happening on my system, and the cron log has some weirdness in it that I'm not quite sure how to interpret. this is the output of /var/log/cron:

Code:

Feb 27 10:25:10 6h057 atd[4412]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 00:17:05 6h057 atd[4772]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 17:28:29 6h057 atd[4521]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 17:35:41 6h057 atd[4521]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 18:24:59 6h057 atd[4521]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 18:44:35 6h057 atd[4522]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 19:15:05 6h057 atd[4521]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  4 22:21:42 6h057 atd[4717]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  5 20:29:23 6h057 atd[4521]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  5 21:11:25 6h057 atd[4385]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  7 17:35:08 6h057 atd[4580]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  7 20:59:59 6h057 atd[4580]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  7 21:25:52 6h057 atd[4385]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  8 04:45:54 6h057 atd[4624]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  8 10:52:44 6h057 atd[4692]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  8 19:08:14 6h057 atd[4538]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  9 12:40:05 6h057 atd[4644]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied
Mar  9 15:22:38 6h057 atd[4450]: Cannot change to /var/spool/atjobs: Permission denied

I find this very odd because I have never used 'at' ever, and it doesn't appear to be in the default cron or syslog configuration. Can somebody give me an idea of why this is appearing?

Thank you

jproveaux · 03-10-2006, 12:15 PM

what distro are you running? Are you using NFS?

EDIT: The error is produced, most likely, by a permissions problem. Of course, that wouldn't explain why it's running "without your permission"....

There's a LQ thread about it; see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=221772

gilead · 03-10-2006, 01:45 PM

Since you're running Slackware, have a look in /etc/rc.d/rc.M for a line like:

Code:

/usr/sbin/atd -b 15 -l 1

If it's there, that's normal - but the error message isn't. On my system, that directory has the following permissions:

Code:

ls -ld /var/spool/atjobs
drwx------ 2 daemon daemon 72 2006-03-05 11:58 /var/spool/atjobs

bl0tt0 · 03-10-2006, 02:26 PM

Thanks gilead! That was the exact issue that I had. Somehow the /var/spool/atjobs got its owner and group changed to bin. A quick reinstall of 'at' showed that this was indeed the problem. I wonder how that change occurred, since I definitely didn't run a chown on it myself. Any ideas?

Thank you.

gilead · 03-10-2006, 02:47 PM

Only guessing I'm afraid - possibly upgrading/installing something else changed the permissions. Was the at package part of your original install or added later?

bl0tt0 · 03-10-2006, 02:54 PM

it was originally installed as far as I can recall. I did an expert install where I put almost everything on except for several server daemons that I knew I wouldn't need on my desktop system. I'm wondering what could have changed it since I could get it back to normal by simply reinstalling at. In any case, it also has me wondering what other permissions may have been changed in my system. I guess I'll be reading my logs starting from around Feb 26...