Problem with cron

UNIX Solaris
1

Just wanted to know, what happens if a user exists in both files cron.allow and cron.deny.

Will the user be able to set cron?

Thanks,
Deepak

2

He cannot run cron, in this case.

3

A very strange problem comes when a user runs cron. The editor doesn't open while issuing

#crontab -e

A error comes instead,

Xlib : connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib : No protocol specified

Error : Can't open display: : 0.0
crontab: temporary file empty

Please guide me to resolve this.

Thanks,
Deepak

---------- Post updated at 11:05 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:55 AM ----------

Incredible, if a user exists in cron.allow and cron.deny files, user will be able to run cron.

Xlib : connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib : No protocol specified

Error : Can't open display: : 0.0
crontab: temporary file empty

This error was only due to the lack of users home directory. When I run with a user having home directory, it runs successfully.

Thanks,
Deepak

4

As which user you're doing this?
did you try EDITOR=vi; export EDITOR , then crontab -e ?

5

The editor is already set to VI. Thats why, when issuing

#crontab -e

with root user, it is coming with VI. The problem is with issuing same command with other users whoever is not having home directory. The same user when directory gets assigned, able to edit and run cron. Now the problem is over when there is home diretory. But I wanted to know what is the impact if there is no home directory.

Thanks,
Deepakk

6

You've already got the answer for your question

7

Incredible, thanks for your interest in my problem. As far as I guess, if there is home directory for a user then when the user logs in, it sets the variables as per instructions from scripts in the home directory. Which makes VI as a default editor.

But when no home directory, user won't get any kind of set variables.

Is this the reason for below error message?

Xlib : connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib : No protocol specified

Error : Can't open display: : 0.0
crontab: temporary file empty

Thanks,
Deepak

8

If the user has no home directory, his home directory defaults to / so variables are definitely set.