Re: cron orphans

Steven Stern wrote:

I noticed the following in my logwatch email today:

--------------------- Cron Begin ------------------------

**Unmatched Entries**
ORPHAN (no passwd entry) ORPHAN (no passwd entry)

When I look at /var/log/cron, it seems that this error is generated whenever I
update my crontab via crontab -e

/var/log/cron:

May 12 08:35:19 ciscy crontab[26674]: (sdstern) LIST (sdstern) May 12 08:35:37 ciscy crontab[26675]: (sdstern) BEGIN EDIT (sdstern) May 12 08:36:00 ciscy crond[2326]: (tmp.15574) ORPHAN (no passwd entry) May 12 08:36:00 ciscy crond[2326]: (tmp.24677) ORPHAN (no passwd entry) May 12 08:36:00 ciscy crond[2326]: (tmp.26673) ORPHAN (no passwd entry) May 12 08:36:05 ciscy crontab[26675]: (sdstern) REPLACE (sdstern) May 12 08:36:05 ciscy crontab[26675]: (sdstern) END EDIT (sdstern)

My question: Is this really an error and indicative of a problem? --

Yes it is an error.
You seem to be trying to create a crontab for a user that does not exist in the passwd file. "crontab -e" tries to create a crontab for the logged in user. Look in /var/spool/cron to see what users have crontabs, as well as checking those with /etc/passwd for validity.

Cron expects each user who has an *individual* crontab file to be in /etc/passwd. If your user does not have an account on the local machine this may happen.

"crontab -e" edits or creates a crontab file for the current user and if that user does not have a local account it fails. It also fails if users are not permitted to create crontab entries but AFAIK with a different message.

Steve