Non-root users are unable to run cronjobs with custom PAM crond configuration on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Issue
- Cron not working for anything but root. It used to work. When cron jobs run, the following error is seen:
crond[32356]: Permission denied
crond[32356]: CRON (oracle) ERROR: failed to open PAM security session: Bad file descriptor
crond[32356]: CRON (oracle) ERROR: cannot set security context
crond[32368]: pam_access(crond:account): access denied for user `oracle' from `cron'
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5)
- PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) changed for some services from defaults to reference different lists in /etc/security/access*.conf
- List of users that should have access to run cronjobs is stored in /etc/security/access-cron.conf:
$ cat /etc/security/access-cron.conf
root
patrol3
oracle
drm1usr
- PAM configuration is the default:
$ cat /etc/pam.d/crond
#
# The PAM configuration file for the cron daemon
#
#
auth sufficient pam_env.so
auth required pam_rootok.so
auth include system-auth
account required pam_access.so
account include system-auth
session required pam_loginuid.so
session include system-auth
Subscriber exclusive content
A Red Hat subscription provides unlimited access to our knowledgebase, tools, and much more.
