Re: help with cron/rsync error message

[RVP <rvp%SDF.ORG@localhost>]

On Wed, 16 Nov 2022, Steve Blinkhorn wrote:

> Results are:
> 1.  cron: in pam_vprompt(): no conversation function

I think when you upgraded your machines, you may have extracted all the sets
except {,x}etc (and, not used sysinst to do the update?).

In 8.x, cron doesn't use PAM, so no /etc/pam.d/cron is present. The cron in
9.x is built with PAM support and therefore comes with a PAM config. file.
When this new cron runs but doesn't find a /etc/pam.d/cron, it spits out
these errors:

```
cron[3913]: (CRON) pam_authenticate failed (System error)
cron: in pam_vprompt(): no conversation function
```

Install the cron PAM file from the 9.2 etc set; and, to forestall any more
issues of this sort, get etc.tar.xz (and xetc.tar.xz if you've installed X)
and merge it using etcupdate:

```
# etcupdate -s /tmp/etc.tar.xz -s /tmp/xetc.tar.xz
```

> File: /usr/lib/libpam.so.4.0
>
> String dump of section '.comment':
>  [     0]  GCC: (NetBSD nb2 20150115) 4.8.4

sysinst should've removed all these older versions when it upgraded the
system, but as none of the symlinks point to it, having it around it shouldn't
cause any problems.

-RVP