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Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:49:02 -0400
To: "Pavel Prokharau" <pprokharau@gmail.com>
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From: Mike Meyer <mwm-keyword-freebsdhackers2.e313df@mired.org>
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Yar Tikhiy <yar@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: cron(8) related summer of code project
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On Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:07:08 +0200
"Pavel Prokharau" <pprokharau@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was thinking about updating our cron(8) implementation. This project is
> mentioned in ideas list
> http://www.freebsd.org/projects/ideas/#p-cron-and-atrun.
> 
> For now my proposal is following:
> 
> * update the code base to ISC (OpenBSD already has it for a while)
> 
> * incorporate changes other BSDs has. First of all it's trivial security
> fixes OpenBSD has (like strcpy -> strlcpy)
> 
> * atrun(8) improvements as mentioned on ideas page
> 
> * add privilege separation to cron(8). Its code base is really old and
> likely to have security bugs.
> 
> I'd like this work to be done a summer of code project. But I'm not sure
> if amount of work proposed sufficient for summer of code.
> 
> If you have some ideas about further improvements to cron(8) I'd be glad
> hear them and work on it.

Not cron, but cron-related.

I'd like to see the periodic infrastructure made available to
users. This isn't hard, but you have to be careful about security.  A
last script in each of the daily/weekly/monthly periodic directories
that for each user (does each have to ask ala cron? Does it just look
for ~/periodic? ???), then runs periodic as that user with the proper
arguments.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.