What invokes cricket on FreeBSD

[stan]

On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 04:22:43PM +0200, Mel Flynn wrote:
> On Thursday 03 September 2009 15:41:07 stan wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 09:33:35AM -0400, stan wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 09:22:56AM -0400, stan wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 01:43:15PM +0100, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> > > > > 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
> > > >
> > > > OK, I was able to execute the cricket collector caoomand bu using the
> > > > su - format, and it ran corectly.
> > > >
> > > > Cany anyone sugest what to check to see why cron is not executing this
> > > > command? I see no evidence of it's running in either the cricket logs'
> > > > or cron's logs.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks.
> > >
> > > Repkying to my own message again :-(
> > >
> > >
> > > OK, I found in the cron man page the following:
> > >
> > >  Before running a command from a per-account crontab file, cron
> > >  checks the status of the account with pam(3) and skips the command if
> > >  the account is unavailable, e.g., locked out or expired.
> > >
> > > So, now the question is, how do I unlock that user?
> >
> > This gets strnager. I found the pw cammand, which should do thatm but:
> >
> > pnoc# pw unlock cricket
> > pw: user 'cricket' is not locked
> >
> > So, how come:
> >
> > pnoc# su - cricket
> > This account is currently not available.
> 
> Cause cricket doesn't have a valid home directory. However, you can simply 
> copy the /var/cron/tabs/cricket to /tmp. Remove the time colums, then run:
> su -m cricket /usr/bin/env -i HOME=/nonexistent PATH=/bin:/usr/bin \
> 	/bin/sh /tmp/cricket
> 
> That's the best approximation of how cron runs the commands. If you don't see 
> anything in the cron logs however, it may be an issue with the timestamps 
> specified not yielding any runs. Then it would help to see the actual crontab 
> file.

Hmm, but I think it does :

pnoc# grep cricket /etc/passwd
cricket:*:141:80:Cricket Monitoring User:/usr/local/cricket:/usr/sbin/nologin

and

pnoc# ls -ld /usr/local/cricket
drwxr-xr-x  7 cricket  www  512 Apr  8 16:41 /usr/local/cricket

As far as cron logs, I am _now_ gettting an entry that looks like cron is
executing the collector:

Sep  3 10:40:00 pnoc /usr/sbin/cron[80979]: (cricket) CMD
(/usr/local/cricket/cricket/collect-subtrees normal)

But, still not getting anything in cricket's logs:

ls: No match.
pnoc# ls -l /usr/local/cricket/*logs
total 2812
-rw-r--r--  1 cricket  www   74098 Sep  3 09:17 normal.0

The 9:17 time is from a manual run of the collector.

I must admit, I am not certain waht to check next.

Thanks for the help!



-- 
One of the main causes of the fall of the roman empire was that, lacking
zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C
programs.