RHBA-2009:0025 - 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 better security and more powerful configuration
options to the standard version of cron.

This updated vixie-cron package includes fixes for the following bugs:

• the "@reboot" crontab macro incorrectly ran jobs when the crond daemon

was restarted.

• the crond daemon now sets the character set for emails by default to the

system's default character set for its locale. On most systems, this will
result in the following Content-Type entity-header field: "Content-Type:
text/plain; charset=UTF-8".

Note: it is now also possible to set the Content-Type and
Content-Transfer-Encoding headers explicitly in crontab files, using
crontab variables of those same names. This capability is documented in the
crontab(5) manual page.

• the crontab binary has been made a position-independent executable (PIE).

All 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/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 180145 - crond does not set Character-Set when sending mails
• BZ - 395021 - Make crontab a PIE
• BZ - 429850 - crontab error with @reboot entry

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)