/usr/bin/crontab permissions are wrong. Please set to 4755

[Lucas]

Could someone explain me why would cPanel change the permissions of crontab incorrectly? I had fixed them and on the update they got messed up again. Is this a bug or is there something wrong on my server?

/usr/bin/crontab permissions are wrong. Please set to 4755

[natong]

I faced this problem too.
It's CentOS 5 and cPanel bug 6 months ago.


To fix these, run

chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab

from the command line as root.

[natong]

by the way, I still get the problem.

$ crontab -l
cron/taoto: Permission denied

[Ivan A]

ls -lo /usr/bin/crontab
chflags noschg /usr/bin/crontab
chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab

[natong]

Found solution:

chmod 4775 /usr/bin/crontab

After run those command, check permission of /var/spool/cron and user owner permission files too.

They should be:

root 04:00:15 AM /var/spool/cron 900 # ls -al
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 5 03:41 ./
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 May 23 22:53 ../
-rw------- 1 root root 1394 Jun 4 12:04 mailman
-rw------- 1 root root 385 Jun 5 00:47 root
-rw------- 1 taoto taoto 154 Jun 5 03:38 taoto
-rw------- 1 thumb thumb 51 Jun 5 03:41 thumb

[natong]

When user use cPanel to add cron job, system reset owner of /var/spool/cron/* to root

Then user can't use command line "crontab -l".

Sometime system also reset permission of folder /var/spool/cron/ to drwx------

root 03:22:59 AM /var/spool/cron 1015 # ls -l

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 8 03:22 ./
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 May 23 22:53 ../
-rw------- 1 root root 1394 Jun 7 00:49 mailman
-rw------- 1 root root 385 Jun 8 00:47 root
-rw------- 1 root taotoo 101 Jun 8 03:22 taotoo
-rw------- 1 thumbno thumbno 51 Jun 5 03:41 thumbno

I add bug report to
http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=6373

[tomdchi]

this is happening to me as well. any word on a fix?


edit:
found a fix a from a few months ago. I had to run
chattr -i /usr/bin/crontab

[rs-freddo]

problem still happening

WHM 11.23.2 cPanel 11.23.4-R26138
REDHAT Enterprise 5.2 x86_64 on standard - WHM X v3.1.0

[Garry-UK]

Hi,

I was having problems with this as well cPanel users was not able to create a cron, but after running: chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab
It fixed the problem. I am running:

WHM 11.23.2 cPanel 11.23.4-R26138
CENTOS Enterprise 5.2 x86_64 on virtuozzo - WHM X v3.1.0

[cpanelkenneth]

cPanel does not modify the permissions of the crontab binary.

Even if your permissions on /var/spool/cron are set to 0700, a normal user in a normal shell should be able to modify and display his own crontab from the command line.

Tested on CentOS 4.6 and FreeBSD 7 (display below is from CentOS, however permissions are the same on the FreeBSD server).

root@mundane [~]# ls -l /usr/bin/crontab 
-rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 82916 Aug  2  2007 /usr/bin/crontab*
root@mundane [~]# ls -l /var/spool/cron
total 36
drwx------   2 root root     4096 Jul 30 13:15 ./
drwxr-xr-x  17 root root     4096 Mar  2  2007 ../
-rw-------   1 root root     1430 Jul 17 15:40 mailman
-rw-------   1 root mysqlbug   10 Dec  7  2006 mysqlbug
-rw-------   1 root root      496 Jul 30 09:37 root
-rw-------   1 root root       87 Jul 30  2007 standard
-rw-------   1 root abcdee    318 Jul 30 13:15 tramel
root@mundane [~]# su - tramel
tramel@abc.com [~]# echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
tramel@abc.com [~]# crontab -l
MAILTO="tramel"
0 0 * * * echo "Test the 6th" >> /tmp/cptest
0 5 * * * echo "Test the 5th" >> /tmp/cptest
0 4,8,12,22 * * * echo "mimi" >> /dev/null
0 0 * * * echo "hi test me" > /tmp/cptest
0 3 * * * echo "Another test" >> /tmp/cptest
0 3 * * * echo "Test the 4th" >> /dev/null
tramel@abc.com [~]# crontab -e
crontab: installing new crontab
tramel@abc.com [~]# crontab -l
MAILTO="tramel"
0 0 * * * echo "Test the 6th" >> /tmp/cptest
0 5 * * * echo "Test the 5th" >> /tmp/cptest
0 4,8,12,22 * * * echo "mimi" >> /dev/null
0 0 * * * echo "hi test me" > /tmp/cptest
0 3 * * * echo "Another test" >> /tmp/cptest
0 3 * * * echo "Test the 4th" >> /dev/null
0 0 * * * echo "CLI Test" >> /dev/null
tramel@abc.com [~]# logout

If something keeps changing the permissions of /usr/bin/crontab then you need to hunt down what is causing that change.

[rs-freddo]

This happened for me on a new install. I don't know if crontab permissions change, they were just wrong to start with.

[cpanelkenneth]

This happened for me on a new install. I don't know if crontab permissions change, they were just wrong to start with.

Correct. /usr/bin/crontab gets installed non-setuid by the distro, but cPanel wants the permissions to be setuid, likely because of applying 0700 permissions to /var/spool/cron

[Babylon]

Anyone able to help further with this? I tried the noted solutions above, however:

crontab -l
cron/root: Permission denied


Running CentOS 5 here as well.

Edit: nevermind. I had to chown root:root /usr/bin/crontab

Then chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab

[openaccess]

I have opened bug #9689 on this topic since this thread provided no
satisfactory resolution. Please read this bug for my experience and recommendations.

Bug 9689 - /usr/bin/crontab permissions get lost on CentOS

Thank you
David Manifold