A cronjob for the apache user - is the home dir for apache really necessary?

["Poggenpohl, Daniel" <daniel.poggenpohl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

Preface: My system is Solaris 11.2/11.3 X86/64.

I'm changing some cronjobs which previously ran as root which surely isn't really necessary.
I entered some cronjob in the crontab for the apache and wondered why it didn't execute. I also wondered where the heck I could see what was wrong? I even thought that maybe the cronjob isn't even tried to run because the apache user doesn't have login enabled and has no password set.

Well, after googling a lot, I found out about /var/cron/log and /var/mail/apache, which got me less helpful information (The script was executed, but got rc=1), and more helpful information (real error messages which helped determine the cause). One of the error messages was that the apache user couldn't change directory to his home dir, /export/home/apache. That's correct, because the apache user doesn't need a home dir, because he isn't a real user.
But the script didn't work without me making the directory for the apache user.

Is there some way to prevent this? My cronjob was just "runSomeScript.sh >> script.out", to test it.

Regards,
Daniel Poggenpohl

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx