Ubuntu
cron package

crontab in /var/spool/cron/crontabs are stored by username

Bug #73398 reported by Jerome Haltom
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
cron (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: cron

File in /var/spool/cron/crontabs are created with the name of the user who owns it when running 'crontab -e'. Their permissions are set properly. However, when a user is renamed, his access to these files is not properly preserved by the cron system.

There are two solutions:

a) name the files with an assigned immutable identifier, specifically the POSIX uid
b) open and locate files by enumerating the owner permission

Either solution solves the problem. Solution (a) is easier to code and leads to less overall confusion on the users (why is foo a file for foo2, and foo a file for bar?).

Áron Sisak (asisak)
Changed in cron:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Jerome Haltom (wasabi) wrote :

Just wanted to add some more commentary. Solving this is rather important for company's and the like with centralized user bases. A lot of the time, people's login name gets renamed from a central authority... corporate policy, they get married, name changes, etc. It's important that a solution does not require the effected machine to be online to track the rename itself, as it might not be. Names could be retrieved from LDAP.

Revision history for this message
Gordon Lack (gordon-lack) wrote :

> A lot of the time, people's login name gets renamed from a central authority...

Another solution would be to get that policy changed, as it's not a good one.
Such a policy would be a nightmare in any industry that has to track who does what for regulatory purposes, where user ids should be constant and unique to an individual.

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