I am using systemd rather than upstart, but the bug is the same: cron depends on remote-fs.target, autofs depends on remote-fs.target, so they start together. The result is that the job is run with the working directory set to /var/spool/cron.
What cron should be waiting for is home directories being available, but there doesn't seem to be a suitable systemd target for to achieve this. The attached patch makes cron detect failure to chdir to the home directory; failure to chdir is treated as a critical error and the job is not started. In addition, if some reboot jobs don't start due to the home directory not being available, this will try them for up to 5 times before giving up (about 5 minutes). ** Patch added: "cron-reboot.patch" https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/696098/+attachment/5681677/+files/cron-reboot.patch -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to cron in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/696098 Title: cron @reboot rules fail for users wuth autofs homes, due to missing upstart dependancy Status in cron package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Binary package hint: cron If a user has a @reboot cron entry like: === @reboot date >> date.log === And their home directory is mounted by autofs into /home then, the job will fail during a machine reboot because the cron service starts before autofs service. I think this is a missing dependency between in the cron upstart configuration, to fix this I think that cron should be started after autofs (only when autofs is enabled). ProblemType: Bug Architecture: amd64 Date: Fri Dec 31 12:32:49 2010 Dependencies: adduser 3.112ubuntu1 base-files 5.0.0ubuntu23 base-passwd 3.5.22 coreutils 8.5-1ubuntu3 debconf 1.5.32ubuntu3 debconf-i18n 1.5.32ubuntu3 debianutils 3.2.3 dpkg 1.15.8.4ubuntu3 findutils 4.4.2-1ubuntu1 gcc-4.5-base 4.5.1-7ubuntu2 libacl1 2.2.49-3 libattr1 1:2.4.44-2 libbz2-1.0 1.0.5-4ubuntu1 libc-bin 2.12.1-0ubuntu10 libc6 2.12.1-0ubuntu10 libdb4.8 4.8.30-1 libgcc1 1:4.5.1-7ubuntu2 liblocale-gettext-perl 1.05-6 liblzma2 4.999.9beta+20100527-1 libncurses5 5.7+20100626-0ubuntu1 libpam-modules 1.1.1-4ubuntu2 libpam-runtime 1.1.1-4ubuntu2 libpam0g 1.1.1-4ubuntu2 libselinux1 2.0.94-1 libtext-charwidth-perl 0.04-6 libtext-iconv-perl 1.7-2 libtext-wrapi18n-perl 0.06-7 lsb-base 4.0-0ubuntu8 ncurses-bin 5.7+20100626-0ubuntu1 passwd 1:4.1.4.2-1ubuntu3 perl-base 5.10.1-12ubuntu2 sed 4.2.1-7 sensible-utils 0.0.4ubuntu1 tzdata 2010o-0ubuntu0.10.10 xz-utils 4.999.9beta+20100527-1 zlib1g 1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3ubuntu1 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10 NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia Package: cron 3.0pl1-114ubuntu1 PackageArchitecture: amd64 ProcEnviron: PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8 SourcePackage: cron Tags: maverick Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic x86_64 /etc/init/cron.conf === # cron - regular background program processing daemon # # cron is a standard UNIX program that runs user-specified programs at # periodic scheduled times description "regular background program processing daemon" start on runlevel [2345] stop on runlevel [!2345] expect fork respawn exec cron === ps aux | grep -E '(automount|cron)' root 1542 0.0 0.0 21128 628 ? Ss Dec23 0:01 cron root 1867 0.0 0.0 123208 1044 ? Ssl Dec23 0:02 /usr/sbin/automount cron has a lower pid so it started first... To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cron/+bug/696098/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
