Re: Cygwin 1.5.25 issue: Crontab on Windows

[Aleksander Panayotov <aleksander dot panayotov at gmail dot com>]

It was actually a typo - a missing "2". What I meant was that I tested
it with the 1.7.25 version (the latest one that was on your website
last week) and not with 1.7.5.

On 25 November 2013 10:57, Aleksander Panayotov
<aleksander.panayotov@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
> I am writing to you in order to report a strange issue I encountered
> while using Cygwin 1.5.25 on Windows 2k8 R2 both SE SP1 & EE SP1.
>
> Introduction
>
> Cygwin installation is embedded in the installation of another
> product. Because of that, it is run with the same credentials as the
> installation the Cygwin is embedded in. I am using a rather simplified
> cygwin package containing the most basic functions.
>
> Main content
>
> The crontab utility, provided by Cygwin, is used to run maintenace
> scripts. Since everything is done during the installation, I
> encountered the following issue:
>
> 1) The installation of the product is initialized by the user X
>
> 2) During installation on the product, Cygwin installation is also
> initialized by the user X
>
> 3) The user X is not allowed to use the -u option when installing the
> cron service // cygrunsrv -I -u X - results in a deadlock, probably
> because of the lack of permissions of the user X.
>
> 4) After finishing the installation of both cygwin & cron, some
> cronjobs are added.
>
> 5) Having the cron service installed with the default user (SYSTEM),
> makes it impossible to add the cronjobs to the user X' crontab.
>
> 6) When checking user X' crontab, the jobs added are shown, but even
> if some of the entries are removed, the jobs continue to run (probably
> because they are added using the SYSTEM user).
>
> Summary
>
> The cron service is installed with the default user (SYSTEM) since
> there are no permissions to use -u. Jobs are also added with the user
> SYSTEM. The user X cannot edit SYSTEM's cron entries and those
> override everything else.
>
> Conclusion
>
> I would like to know if there is a way to work this around and if not,
> what should I do in order to have proper deployment of the
> cronjobs/cron service. I have also tested this on Cygwin 1.7.5 and I
> observe the same behaviour.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> A. Panayotov

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple