cron + ldap = disaster?

[Natxo Asenjo <natxo.asenjo@gmail.com>]

Hi,


I have successfully deployed a single sign on solution with openldap,
it works great. But, there is a little problem with cron. Everytime one
of the users' or system's crontab changes, cron stops working. The
number of cron processes skyrockets (within minutes you see it going
from 1 to hundreds) and the overall response of the server is badly hit.


I have a solution, which works but it is not really convenient. First I check the number of cron processes:


# pgrep cron


if that is lower than 3/4 (which could happen if several cron jobs run
at the same time for different users) I do nothing. Otherwise, 


# killall cron

# /etc/init.d/cron start

# /etc/init.d/slapd restart


and all is fine until someone changes his/her crontab. 


I found in google that red hat had this issue too in 2000, but it is fixed a long time ago:


https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=9405


Unfortunately I am not a coder :(. It would be sad though if people
would stop using debian in a company environenment because of this
poblem.


Ok, that was it.


regards,

J.I. Asenjo