>Number:         10775
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       cron exits on stat failure
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    bin-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Aug 07 08:19:00 PDT 2000
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Kimmo Suominen
>Release:        1.4.2A (2000-05-30)
>Organization:
Kimmo Suominen
>Environment:
System: NetBSD pyry.gw.com 1.4.2A NetBSD 1.4.2A (GW-GENERIC) #6: Wed May 31 06:12:46 EEST 2000 kim@pyry.gw.com:/net/pyry/src-2/NetBSD/cvsroot/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GW-GENERIC i386

>Description:
    In src/usr.sbin/cron/database.c you'll find that cron will exit if
    it fails to stat the spool directory (/var/cron/tabs).  I think it
    should sleep and try again, and also keep processing the system
    crontab file (/etc/crontab).

>How-To-Repeat:
    I guess you could remove /var/cron/tabs to repeat this.  On one of
    my systems the stat fails occasionally (I don't know why -- resource
    starvation maybe?), and cron dies.  This can go unnoticed for a few
    days, easily.

>Fix:
    Instead of exiting, just don't try to read the indicidual crontab
    files, and retry later (e.g. one minute later?).
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: