Re: using /etc/cron.d

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed%reedmedia.net@localhost>]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2015, matthew sporleder wrote:

> Okay it looks like modes 400 and 600 work

The manpage should be updated for this.  Or I prefer maybe we should fix 
it.

The process_crontab code could be modified so /etc/cron.d/ follows the 
same mode rules as /etc/crontab.

I think the crontab.5 manpage also needs to be fixed that the 
/etc/cron.d/ would have the username field too.

I didn't test this, but just reading code, it appears that /etc/cron.d 
in this implementation uses filenames that are named for the users and 
don't have a user field in the database, while other implementations may 
use arbitrary names and do have user field in the database.  I did a 
quick look at the Debian manpage and it has a note about this:

	Additionally, in Debian, cron reads the files in the /etc/cron.d 
	directory.  cron treats the files in /etc/cron.d as in the same 
	way as the /etc/crontab file (they follow the special format of 
	that file, i.e.  they include the user field) ...