Re: /etc/cron.daily/find exited with return code 1

[Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@pilgrim.umass.edu>]

Hi,

	Yes, I agree that the daily messages from cron are most
irritating, and not very infprmative.  The actual source of the
problem is in /etc/passwd file, where the user nobody has been given
the shell /dev/null (this is a known problem that has been fixed in a
later version, I think, though I'm unsure whether it has made it's way
to the archive sites yet).

	You see, when su sets the user to nobody, it tries to run the
default shell, and complains that it can't run /dev/null.Tthe
redirection to dev/null meant the problem was never reported, and
created the confusing behaviour that when you stopped redirecting to
/dev/null it complained about /dev/null, though for a reson which had
nothing to do with the redirection.

	The fix is to change the shell of the user nobody to bin/sh,
either by using chsh, or by editing /etc/passwd using vipw.

	hope this helps.

		manoj
--
Manoj Srivastava               Systems Research Programmer, Project Pilgrim,
Phone: (413) 545-3918                A143B Lederle Graduate Research Center,
Fax:   (413) 545-1249         University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
<srivasta@pilgrim.umass.edu> <URL:http://www.pilgrim.umass.edu/%7Esrivasta/>