Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!apple!oliveb!sun!sally!plocher
From: plocher%sally@Sun.COM (John Plocher)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: su uucp in crontabs/root ?
Keywords: root uucp crontab su
Message-ID: <101484@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 27 Apr 89 02:21:11 GMT
References: <75@norsat.UUCP> <9449@dasys1.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: plocher@sun.UUCP (John Plocher)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 37

>>such as 9,39 * * * * ulimit 5000; /bin/su -c "/usr/lib/uucp/uu...
>>Can anyone tell me why this 'su' is neccessary?
>
>     These daemons should run as user 'uucp', not because 'root' is
>     incapable of so doing, but because any resulting mail is from 'uucp',
>     so presumably more meaningful, and all the various log entries also
>     leave a better trail.

The reason this is done in root's crontab is because only root can INCREASE
the ulimit; the su is done for the above reason.  If you put this into the
uucp crontab entry you couldn't increase ulimit..

>>The new crontab is enabled with the command:
>>crontab [filename]
>>( I get strange behaviour if i just edit the crontab/uucp file without
>    Easy way to change your crontable:
>
>	vi
>	:0r !crontab -l		# read in existing crontable
>	[ do your editing, in vi, to your heart's content; then: ]
>	:%w !crontab		# submit vi's buffer to crontab
>	:q!

I have a shell script called /etc/vict which contains:

 -- --  /etc/vict  -- -- --
|#                         |
|F=/tmp/vict$$             |
|crontab -l > $F           |
|vi $F                     |
|crontab < $F ; rm $F      |
 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

just su to whatever id you wish and type   /etc/vict


  -John Plocher