[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] New: cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] New: cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

            Bug ID: 12011
           Summary: cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package
           Product: buildroot
           Version: 2019.02.3
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P5
         Component: Other
          Assignee: unassigned at buildroot.uclibc.org
          Reporter: dominique.tronche at atos.net
                CC: buildroot at uclibc.org
  Target Milestone: ---

In package dcron makefile, the per-users directory /var/spool/cron/crontabs is
created but not the timestamp directory /var/spool/cron/cronstamps.
As a consequence, the cron jobs from /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily,... do
not work

When crond is run manually we get the error message:
no timestamp found (user root job sys-hourly)
unable to write timestamp to /var/spool/cron/cronstamps/root.sys-hourly (user
root job sys-hourly)

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

--- Comment #1 from Martijn Scheepers <ms@sdnengineering.nl> ---
http://www.jimpryor.net/linux/releases is offline.

better use https://github.com/dubiousjim/dcron or
https://repo.or.cz/w/dcron.git

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

--- Comment #2 from Zoltan Gyarmati <zgyarmati@zgyarmati.de> ---
It's back online, see:
https://github.com/dubiousjim/dcron/issues/21

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

Carlos Santos <unixmania@gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Assignee|unassigned at buildroot.uclibc |unixmania at gmail.com
                   |.org                        |
             Status|NEW                         |ASSIGNED

--- Comment #3 from Carlos Santos <unixmania@gmail.com> ---
I'm taking this one.

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

--- Comment #4 from Carlos Santos <unixmania@gmail.com> ---
I identified two problems with dcron:

1. The installation creates the required directory /var/spool/cron/ but
   at run-time /var/spool is by default a symlink to /tmp, which by
   default is a tmpfs so the installed /var/spool/<foo> directories
   disappear. This can be solved in the init script as made in
   package/at/S99at but I'm not sure if it's a reasonable approach,
   since the directory contents will not persist between reboots.

2. The error messages that should be sent so the console on startup are
   not shown because crond is started with the "-f" argument via start-
   stop-daemon in order to create a PID file (see the explanation in
   commit 994e9fa72e80f8d618393619fefd68f65821144f). In order to solve
   this problem we must make dcron crate a PID file by itself and run
   in daemon mode, sending the error messages to syslog. Meanwhile we
   can just use pidof to PID file.

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

--- Comment #5 from Carlos Santos <unixmania@gmail.com> ---
Partial fix submitted: https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/1134444/

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

--- Comment #6 from Dominique Tronche <dominique.tronche@atos.net> ---
On the subject of the link issue, in our project, we need to apply a patch to
buildroot which replaces the symlinks to /tmp by real repositories in the
skeletons
This patch is still needed despite 0c96bda11 (allow rootfs overlays to override
symbolic links) since cron creates a /var/spool/cron directory. Since the
rootfs_overlay is made after the make of dcron, /var/spool cannot not be a link
in skeleton
If the /var/spool repositories were created by the S90dcron script, we would
probably not need this patch anymore
Regards
Dominique Tronche

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

--- Comment #7 from Carlos Santos <unixmania@gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Dominique Tronche from comment #6)

As Yann clarified in his review of my patch,

"Getting a presistent storage, and customisations of the directory layout
to use those persistent locations, can not be done in a generic way. It
can only be handled locally, as each one will need to adapt to their own
constraints."

So I submitted a second patch with a better solution:

    https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/1134631/

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[Buildroot] [Bug 12011] cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

[bugzilla at busybox.net]

https://bugs.busybox.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12011

Carlos Santos <unixmania@gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Assignee|unixmania at gmail.com         |unassigned at buildroot.uclibc
                   |                            |.org

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