Re: trouble with `at'

[Kevin Buhr <buhr@telus.net>]

Jerome BENOIT <jgmbenoit@wanadoo.fr> writes:
> 
> > Also, is your "/var" on an unusual filesystem, something besides
> > "ext2" or "ext3"?  Maybe NFS?
> 
> I get trouble on diskless computers (`/var' is mounted through NFS).

Ugh.  That's the problem then.  "at" looks like it's completely broken
if "/var/spool/cron" is in an NFS filesystem.  There are two bugs open
on this:

        http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=13603
        http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=13605

Neither is much help.  NFS permission checking takes place at a
different time than checking for files on a local filesystem.  As a
result, all the games "at" plays with the ownership of the input and
output files result in NFS errors, either when setting up the job with
"at" or---even if that's fixed---when "atd" gets around to trying to
run the job.

The "at" package will require some reworking before this behaviour can
be fixed.  It's one of these situations where it's obvious what's
wrong, and it's obvious how to fix it, but it's *not* obvious whether
or not the obvious fix will introduce new and serious security
problems.

-- 
Kevin <buhr@telus.net>