Package: cron Version: 3.0pl1-127+deb8u1 Severity: important cron needs to be started later then certain services providing non-local users. The init file (/etc/init.d/cron) has this LSB line in it: Should-Start: $network $named slapd autofs ypbind nscd nslcd winbind
But the systemd service file (/lib/systemd/system/cron.service) has no corresponding After= line. When systemd is used, the service file gets precedence and the LSB init file is ignored, thus cron may be started before these services. E.g. on my system, I have local users in a locally-running LDAP server (slapd). When cron starts before slapd, crontabs containing non-local users are ignored: Oct 7 09:34:03 localhost cron[834]: Error: bad username; while reading /etc/crontab Oct 7 09:34:03 localhost cron[834]: (*system*) ERROR (Syntax error, this crontab file will be ignored) Fixed by adding "After=slapd.service" to the cron service file. This is a regression when upgrading from wheezy (as it did not use systemd). Other bug reports exist which are most likely caused by the same problem: #767016 [i| | ] [cron] cron does start before sssd and therefore authentication fails #783665 [i| | ] [cron] cron does not execute some non-root cron.d jobs when started before ypbind -- System Information: Debian Release: 8.2 APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages cron depends on: ii adduser 3.113+nmu3 ii debianutils 4.4+b1 ii dpkg 1.17.25 ii init-system-helpers 1.22 ii libc6 2.19-18+deb8u1 ii libpam-runtime 1.1.8-3.1 ii libpam0g 1.1.8-3.1 ii libselinux1 2.3-2 ii lsb-base 4.1+Debian13+nmu1 Versions of packages cron recommends: ii postfix [mail-transport-agent] 2.11.3-1 Versions of packages cron suggests: pn anacron <none> pn checksecurity <none> ii logrotate 3.8.7-1+b1 Versions of packages cron is related to: ii libnss-ldap 265-3+b1 pn libnss-ldapd <none> ii libpam-ldap 184-8.7+b1 pn libpam-mount <none> pn nis <none> pn nscd <none> -- Configuration Files: /etc/crontab changed [not included] -- no debconf information