RHBA-2008:0586 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated vixie-cron package that fixes various bugs is now available.

Description

The vixie-cron package contains the Vixie version of cron. Cron is a
standard UNIX daemon that runs specified programs at scheduled times. The
vixie-cron package adds improved security and more powerful configuration
options to the standard version of cron.

This updated package fixes the following bugs:

• after crond was restarted or after the first reboot of a system after a

new year (200x-01-01), vixie-cron failed to decode the "day of week" field.
This may have caused cron jobs to run on the wrong day.

• due to an SELinux problem with group permissions, cron jobs may have

failed with errors similar to the following:

(CRON) chdir(HOME) failed: (Permission denied)
(CRON) /home/[user] (Permission denied)
CRON (user) ERROR: failed to open PAM security session: Permission denied
CRON (user) ERROR: cannot set security context

Note: this issue only occurred when using NFS, for example, systems where
home directories are stored on an NFS server.

• users without a home directory, for example, users who were created using

"useradd -M", were not able to run their cron jobs.

Users of vixie-cron are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which
resolves these issues.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released
errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use
the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_58_10188

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 232439 - crond failed "Days of week" after a few hours on 1st/Jan
• BZ - 241877 - Cron does not handle home directories with group deny permissions
• BZ - 455379 - cron jobs for users without home doesn't work

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)