[Courses] [Linux commands]: /etc/crontab, crontab

[olearyck at slu.edu]

On Monday 09 February 2004 06:50 pm, Carla Schroder wrote:
> On Monday 09 February 2004 11:44 am, Christine Bussman wrote:
> > My system is set up by default so that only root can set
> > up a cron job  (trying to execute crontab -l as another
> > user gives a permission denied error).  Is this a security
> > feature, and if so, what are the risks of disabling it?
> > (i.e.
> > using chmod on /usr/bin/crontab)
>
> It's supposed to be this way, ordinary users are not supposed to have power
> over other users. Users can create/edit only their own crontabs, only root
> has power over all. You can mess with it, it's your system. :)

I'm saying that as my normal user I can't even create or edit a cron job at 
all.  Even adding my user to the 'cron' group doesn't change this.  This is 
probably just a feature of gentoo because it tends to be very security 
consious by default.

> > Another system I use doesn't even have /etc/crontab,
> > and running the crontab command returns 'command not
> > found'.  I'm just curious how these systems relate to what
> > you are describing.
>
> Beats the heck out of me! /etc/crontab and the crontab command have been
> around since like forever. What systems are you running?
These are missing on gentoo running on a ppc.  I have the /etc/cron.monthly 
type entries.  When I mentioned this to my mentor (the one who got me started 
with gentoo rather than SuSE) he said that I had no /etc/crontab because 
there were no cron jobs, but this still makes me wonder about the absence of 
the crontab command.  

Christine