What invokes cricket on FreeBSD

[Matthew Seaman]

stan wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 07:48:57AM -0400, stan wrote:
>> I have inherited a system that uses Cricket on FreeBSD to do some data
>> collection. I have set this up myself in the distnat past, but this time I
>> asked a contractor to set it up. I no longer have access to this
>> contractor, and the toher day, we shut down the system this was running on,
>> and when we rebooted the system, cricket id not resume collecting data.
>>
>> I don't see anyhting in /usr/local/etc/rc.d to start it up, nor do I see
>> anything in /etc/crontag. I don't seen any processes owned by cricket
>> running.
>>
>> In FreeBSD, how is this process noramally invoked?
> 
> Sorry to reply to my own message, but I have more data. I did find 
> 
> -rw-------  1 root  wheel  288 Jan 12  2009 /var/cron/tabs/cricke
> 
> Which is, I am failry certain, what is _intended_ to invoke the cricket
> process. However, acording to the cricket logs, the last time I have an
> entry is Aug 29th, which was when the machine was shut down. So, I decided
> to try running this command by hand. Now, to do so I need to be the cricket
> user, so I tried to su - cricket. I was told that this user was not
> avaialble. Looking in /etc/passwd. I found that this users shell was listed
> as /usr/sbin/nologin. I edited /etc/paswd to change this to /nin/sh, but I
> still get the smae error message when I try to su to that user.
> 
> What do I need to change to be able to su to this suer, and might this be
> the reason tha it's crontab entry is notbeing run?

Try:

   # su -m cricket

although the best way to examine and/or modify that user's crontab
is:

   # crontab -e -u cricket

The cricket user not having a usable shell should not stop cron(8)
from running jobs, as it defaults to using /bin/sh or else the 
value of any SHELL= line in the crontab for running the specified jobs.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       Flat 3
                                                      7 Priory Courtyard
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Ramsgate
                                                      Kent, CT11 9PW, UK

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