Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

I'm trying to get to the bottom of an issue with a non-root user running a cron job and I've stumbled upon /etc/security/access.conf. I have a couple of questions:

  • What service reads this file?
  • Do I need to restart anything after editing it?
  • How do I know it's even being used?

Thanks

share|improve this question
what error messages are you seeing from your cron job ? – Iain♦ Aug 14 '12 at 17:44

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

To see which PAM-based services are using it:

grep pam_access /etc/pam.d/*

If it's not mentioned in /etc/pam.d/cron (which I suspect it won't be) then it shouldn't be having any effect on cron jobs. If there are any @include directives in the pam.d files, follow them to make sure you don't miss anything.

share|improve this answer
In /etc/pam.d/crond there's this line: account required pam_access.so - what does that mean? Thanks – Tom Aug 15 '12 at 16:01
It means my guess was wrong and your cron is configured to use the access module. So /etc/security/access.conf will apply. – Alan Curry Aug 15 '12 at 16:11
And to answer the other question 'do I need to restart anything after editing it?'; No, you do not. The file is read every time a session is opened (in your case, when a cron job runs). – Patrick Aug 15 '12 at 18:27
up vote 0 down vote

[1] What service reads this file? It is used by pam

[chida@localhost ~]$ rpm -qf /etc/security/access.conf 
pam-1.1.5-7.fc17.x86_64

[2] Do I need to restart anything after editing it?

Nothing to restart. Once changed, on subsequent login event, the file is read.

[3] How do I know it's even being used?

$ stat /etc/security/access.conf

For more details, do man access.conf.

share|improve this answer
stat /etc/security/access.conf shows Access: 2012-08-15 08:35:01.762992895 +0000 - what causes the Access timestamp to be altered? It wasn't altered when I ran cat /etc/security/access.conf, which must involve reading/accessing the file, right? I'm confused about that. – Tom Aug 15 '12 at 16:04
1  
Linux doesn't do access timestamps correctly anymore, unless you beg for them with the strictatime mount option. – Alan Curry Aug 15 '12 at 16:33

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.