crontab under user not working

I had a HD problem. When I wanted to do a crontab -e, I got the
following. Any ideas?

/var/spool]
houghi@penne : crontab -e
cannot chdir(/var/spool/cron), bailing out.
/var/spool/cron: Permission denied
[/var/spool]
houghi@penne : l
total 56
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 2007-12-16 15:37 ./
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:35 ../
drwx------ 2 vscan root 4096 2008-02-13 15:33 amavis/
drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 atjobs/
drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-09-22 01:43 atspool/
drwxrwx--- 2 mail mail 4096 2007-09-22 00:04 clientmqueue/
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 cron/

Sure I could chmod a lot, but would that be good? What is the standard?

houghi
--
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that
grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.
-- Robert A. Heinlein in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"

houghi wrote:[color=blue]
> I had a HD problem. When I wanted to do a crontab -e, I got the
> following. Any ideas?
>
> /var/spool]
> houghi@penne : crontab -e
> cannot chdir(/var/spool/cron), bailing out.
> /var/spool/cron: Permission denied
> [/var/spool]
> houghi@penne : l
> total 56
> drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 2007-12-16 15:37 ./
> drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:35 ../
> drwx------ 2 vscan root 4096 2008-02-13 15:33 amavis/
> drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 atjobs/
> drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-09-22 01:43 atspool/
> drwxrwx--- 2 mail mail 4096 2007-09-22 00:04 clientmqueue/
> drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 cron/
>
> Sure I could chmod a lot, but would that be good? What is the standard?[/color]

These are the permission on my system:

total 40
drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2008-03-13 02:05 atjobs
drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-09-21 22:51 atspool
drwxrwx--- 2 mail mail 4096 2007-09-21 22:18 clientmqueue
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2008-03-13 02:05 cron
drwx--x--- 3 lp lp 4096 2008-03-07 18:14 cups
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2008-03-13 01:59 locks -> ../lock
drwxr-xr-x 2 lp lp 4096 2007-09-21 22:18 lpd
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 2008-03-20 05:02 mail
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 2007-12-19 14:30 postfix
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-09-21 21:27 repackage
drwxr-xr-x 3 uucp uucp 4096 2008-03-13 01:59 uucp

And inside the cron dir:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-03-26 01:15 lastrun
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 2008-03-26 04:23 tabs

And inside tabs:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root users 202 2008-03-26 04:23 realnc


I have no problems :P

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:[color=blue]
> I have no problems :P[/color]

Since you mentioned an "HD problem", did you manually change entries in
/etc/fstab and forgot to set the right mount options? What does 'mount'
tell you? On my root fs, I have this:

/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,acl,user_xattr)

The "acl" and "user_xattr" part is quite important; as far as I can
tell, openSUSE doesn't just use "old-style" plain Unix permissions, but
also seems to use ACL, so if that's missing from the mount options,
permission problems will occur.

houghi <houghi@houghi.org.invalid> writes:
[color=blue]
>I had a HD problem. When I wanted to do a crontab -e, I got the
>following. Any ideas?[/color]

Your crontab program is not suid root

ls -l /usr/bin/crontab
-rwsr-sr-x 1 root root 36512 Dec 3 11:28 /usr/bin/crontab


[color=blue]
>/var/spool]
>houghi@penne : crontab -e
>cannot chdir(/var/spool/cron), bailing out.
>/var/spool/cron: Permission denied
>[/var/spool]
>houghi@penne : l
>total 56
>drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 2007-12-16 15:37 ./
>drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:35 ../
>drwx------ 2 vscan root 4096 2008-02-13 15:33 amavis/
>drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 atjobs/
>drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-09-22 01:43 atspool/
>drwxrwx--- 2 mail mail 4096 2007-09-22 00:04 clientmqueue/
>drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 cron/[/color]
[color=blue]
>Sure I could chmod a lot, but would that be good? What is the standard?[/color]
[color=blue]
>houghi
>--
>The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that
>grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.
> -- Robert A. Heinlein in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"[/color]

You should check if the suid bit is set for /usr/bin/crontab and it is owned
by root. If so, crontab -e should have no difficulties accessing
directories.

"houghi" <houghi@houghi.org.invalid> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:slrnfuivt5.6ig.houghi@penne.houghi...[color=blue]
>I had a HD problem. When I wanted to do a crontab -e, I got the
> following. Any ideas?
>
> /var/spool]
> houghi@penne : crontab -e
> cannot chdir(/var/spool/cron), bailing out.
> /var/spool/cron: Permission denied
> [/var/spool]
> houghi@penne : l
> total 56
> drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 2007-12-16 15:37 ./
> drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:35 ../
> drwx------ 2 vscan root 4096 2008-02-13 15:33 amavis/
> drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 atjobs/
> drwx------ 2 at at 4096 2007-09-22 01:43 atspool/
> drwxrwx--- 2 mail mail 4096 2007-09-22 00:04 clientmqueue/
> drwx------ 4 root root 4096 2007-10-06 10:47 cron/
>
> Sure I could chmod a lot, but would that be good? What is the standard?
>
> houghi
> --
> The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that
> grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.
> -- Robert A. Heinlein in "The Man Who Sold the Moon"[/color]

Hot John wrote:[color=blue]
> You should check if the suid bit is set for /usr/bin/crontab and it is owned
> by root. If so, crontab -e should have no difficulties accessing
> directories.[/color]

Please do not toppost.

houghi
--
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done,
and why. Then do it.
-- Heinlein : Time Enough For Love