Dear Sunners,
My original problem is:
> I have a SS10 running SunOS 4.1.3, when the system tries to invoke the cron daemon
> in system startup, the cron progam dumps a core file in the dir. of
> /var/spool/cron/crontabs, even though the file /var/spool/cron/FIFO is correctly
> created. Simply more the core file shows that there is some stuff like:
>
> /var/spool/cron/FIFOCan't access %s: %m/var/spool/cron/FIFOCan't start cron - another
> cron may be running (%s exists)/var/spool/cron/FIFO/var/spool/cron/FIFOCan't open %s:
> %m/var/spool/cron/FIFOTZTZ=%sTZ/var/spool/cron/crontabsCan't change directory to %s:
> %m/var/spool/cron/crontabs.Can't read %s:
>
> The error seems to be "/var/spool/cron/FIFO exists"!! However, when I try to delete
> this file and rerun cron manually, the core dump happens again with similar content.
>
> Any ideas or clues are greatly appreciated.
> Thanks a lot.
So far, I have received two replies:
Chris A. Wozniak (chris@tisc.edu.au)
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Somehow the FIFO pipe in /var/spool/cron has got corrupt or isn't a pipe.
You need to recreate it with "mknod -p" command.
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Jim Mintha <mintha@geog.ubc.ca>
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I had the same problem recently and it took the longest time to solve.
At first the only way I could fix it was to reinstall the OS, but
after a while it would dump core again. It turns out that cron didn't
like my password file. I had a line at the end to dis-allow login
from users of a certain netgroup something like:
+@OLDUSERS:no-login:0:0:0::no-shell
When I changed this back to:
+::0:0:::
cron was happy again. I don't know the exact cause, and the line in
the password file was only temporary so it was not a problem. Hope
this helps
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The experience of Jim does help!! After removing a line of
+@netgroup:
from the /etc/passwd file, the cron daemon can be started again.
This may be a bug of SunOS 4.1.3. If anyone know there is a patch
for it, please e-mail to me.
Lots of thanks to Jim and Chris.
Regards
-- Mr C.M. Fung | Internet: cmfung@ee.cuhk.hk Electronic Engineering Department | BITNET: The Chinese University of Hong Kong | Tel. No: (852) 609 8286 Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong | FAX No: (852) 603 5558
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