New: cronstamps directory is not created by dcron package

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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--- Comment #1 from Martijn Scheepers <[email protected]> ---
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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--- Comment #2 from Zoltan Gyarmati <[email protected]> --- It's back online, see:
https://github.com/dubiousjim/dcron/issues/21

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Carlos Santos <[email protected]> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

           Assignee|unassigned at buildroot.uclibc |unixmania at gmail.com
                   |.org                        |
             Status|NEW                         |ASSIGNED

--- Comment #3 from Carlos Santos <[email protected]> --- I'm taking this one.

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--- Comment #4 from Carlos Santos <[email protected]> --- 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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--- Comment #5 from Carlos Santos <[email protected]> --- Partial fix submitted: https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/1134444/

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--- Comment #6 from Dominique Tronche <[email protected]> --- 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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--- Comment #7 from Carlos Santos <[email protected]> --- (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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Carlos Santos <[email protected]> changed:

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

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Yann E. MORIN <[email protected]> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

         Resolution|---                         |MOVED
                 CC|                            |[email protected]
             Status|ASSIGNED                    |RESOLVED

--- Comment #8 from Yann E. MORIN <[email protected]> --- Thank you for your report.

The issue tracker for the Buildroot project has been moved to the Gitlab.com issue tracker:
https://gitlab.com/buildroot.org/buildroot/-/issues

We are taking this opportunity to close old issues in this old tracker. If you believe your issue is still relevant, please open one in the new issue tracker.

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