[Bug 696098] Re: cron @reboot rules fail for users wuth autofs homes, due to missing upstart dependancy

[Peter Benie]

I am using systemd rather than upstart, but the bug is the same: cron
depends on remote-fs.target, autofs depends on remote-fs.target, so they
start together. The result is that the job is run with the working
directory set to /var/spool/cron.

What cron should be waiting for is home directories being available, but
there doesn't seem to be a suitable systemd target for to achieve this.

The attached patch makes cron detect failure to chdir to the home
directory; failure to chdir is treated as a critical error and the job
is not started.

In addition, if some reboot jobs don't start due to the home directory
not being available, this will try them for up to 5 times before giving
up (about 5 minutes).


** Patch added: "cron-reboot.patch"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/696098/+attachment/5681677/+files/cron-reboot.patch

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/696098

Title:
  cron @reboot rules fail for users wuth autofs homes, due to missing
  upstart dependancy

Status in cron package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: cron

  If a user has a @reboot cron entry like:
  ===
  @reboot date >> date.log
  ===

  And their home directory is mounted by autofs into /home

  then, the job will fail during a machine reboot because the
  cron service starts before autofs service.

  I think this is a missing dependency between in the cron upstart
  configuration, to fix this I think that cron should be started after
  autofs (only when autofs is enabled).

  
  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Fri Dec 31 12:32:49 2010
  Dependencies:
   adduser 3.112ubuntu1
   base-files 5.0.0ubuntu23
   base-passwd 3.5.22
   coreutils 8.5-1ubuntu3
   debconf 1.5.32ubuntu3
   debconf-i18n 1.5.32ubuntu3
   debianutils 3.2.3
   dpkg 1.15.8.4ubuntu3
   findutils 4.4.2-1ubuntu1
   gcc-4.5-base 4.5.1-7ubuntu2
   libacl1 2.2.49-3
   libattr1 1:2.4.44-2
   libbz2-1.0 1.0.5-4ubuntu1
   libc-bin 2.12.1-0ubuntu10
   libc6 2.12.1-0ubuntu10
   libdb4.8 4.8.30-1
   libgcc1 1:4.5.1-7ubuntu2
   liblocale-gettext-perl 1.05-6
   liblzma2 4.999.9beta+20100527-1
   libncurses5 5.7+20100626-0ubuntu1
   libpam-modules 1.1.1-4ubuntu2
   libpam-runtime 1.1.1-4ubuntu2
   libpam0g 1.1.1-4ubuntu2
   libselinux1 2.0.94-1
   libtext-charwidth-perl 0.04-6
   libtext-iconv-perl 1.7-2
   libtext-wrapi18n-perl 0.06-7
   lsb-base 4.0-0ubuntu8
   ncurses-bin 5.7+20100626-0ubuntu1
   passwd 1:4.1.4.2-1ubuntu3
   perl-base 5.10.1-12ubuntu2
   sed 4.2.1-7
   sensible-utils 0.0.4ubuntu1
   tzdata 2010o-0ubuntu0.10.10
   xz-utils 4.999.9beta+20100527-1
   zlib1g 1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3ubuntu1
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Package: cron 3.0pl1-114ubuntu1
  PackageArchitecture: amd64
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8
  SourcePackage: cron
  Tags: maverick
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic x86_64

  
  /etc/init/cron.conf
  ===
  # cron - regular background program processing daemon
  #
  # cron is a standard UNIX program that runs user-specified programs at
  # periodic scheduled times

  description     "regular background program processing daemon"

  start on runlevel [2345]
  stop on runlevel [!2345]

  expect fork
  respawn

  exec cron
  ===

  ps aux | grep -E '(automount|cron)'
  root      1542  0.0  0.0  21128   628 ?        Ss   Dec23   0:01 cron
  root      1867  0.0  0.0 123208  1044 ?        Ssl  Dec23   0:02 /usr/sbin/automount

  cron has a lower pid so it started first...

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