Bug Fix Advisory vixie-cron bug fix update

Advisory: RHBA-2008:0586-5
Type: Bug Fix Advisory
Severity: N/A
Issued on: 2008-07-23
Last updated on: 2008-07-23
Affected Products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux FasTrack (v. 5 client)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux FasTrack (v. 5 server)
OVAL: N/A

Details

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

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

Updated packages

Red Hat Enterprise Linux FasTrack (v. 5 client)

SRPMS:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.src.rpm     46dfd11cfe931e34c040e13156885d51
 
IA-32:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.i386.rpm     83bbe7780084ec27075ecf05cc1f3968
 
x86_64:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.x86_64.rpm     1734cff1ede3f0569cb00fd39e2c7d3c
 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux FasTrack (v. 5 server)

SRPMS:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.src.rpm     46dfd11cfe931e34c040e13156885d51
 
IA-32:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.i386.rpm     83bbe7780084ec27075ecf05cc1f3968
 
IA-64:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.ia64.rpm     50c92f3e1f09679a474725ee4e7fb374
 
PPC:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.ppc.rpm     7ad732761f86093dd319ec2e0cc7deed
 
s390x:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.s390x.rpm     32ef5b0e36dd207c3ec30774ab1d25d7
 
x86_64:
vixie-cron-4.1-76.el5.x86_64.rpm     1734cff1ede3f0569cb00fd39e2c7d3c
 
(The unlinked packages above are only available from the Red Hat Network)

Bugs fixed (see bugzilla for more information)

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


Keywords

after, fail, group, home, new, permission, without, year


These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat for security. Our key and details on how to verify the signature are available from:
https://www.redhat.com/security/team/key/#package

The Red Hat security contact is secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at http://www.redhat.com/security/team/contact/