Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2017 08:37:26 +0000 From: bugzilla-noreply@freebsd.org To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: [Bug 224537] cron uses directory mtime to notice changes - not sufficient - file changes don't change dir mtime Message-ID: <bug-224537-8@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3D224537 Bug ID: 224537 Summary: cron uses directory mtime to notice changes - not sufficient - file changes don't change dir mtime Product: Base System Version: 11.1-RELEASE Hardware: Any OS: Any Status: New Severity: Affects Some People Priority: --- Component: bin Assignee: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Reporter: jsellens@syonex.com /usr/sbin/cron allows multiple files in /etc/cron.d and /usr/local/etc/cron= .d and uses the mtime of the directory as an indicator of when to reload the c= ron files. In cron/database.c in load_database() at around line 100, the comment is: /* if spooldir's mtime has not changed, we don't need to fiddle with * the database. and the statbuf.st_mtime is compared to the previous version. If a file in a directory changes, the mtime on the directory does not chang= e, so changes to files in cron.d directories are often not noticed. Repeat by putting a cron file in /etc/cron.d, then using echo or cat to add= an additional entry and notice that the additional entry does not run. Simila= rly, use vi to edit the file, the directory's mtime does not change, and cron fi= le changes are not loaded. The cron(8) man page says: "Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a cron= tab file is modified." which is incorrect. It mentions that crontab(1) will up= date the directory time, but crontab(1) can't be used with /etc/cron.d or /usr/local/etc/cron.d files. Perhaps the code could compute and compare a checksum on the directory, or a checksum on the results of opendir() / readdir() , rather than looking only= at the directory mtime? (I ran into this when puppet was updating files in /etc/cron.d and the comm= ands being run were not changing.) Thanks! --=20 You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.=
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?bug-224537-8>