cron orphans

[Jeff Vian]

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
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