What invokes cricket on FreeBSD

[stan]

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.


-- 
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.