Linux

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Password expiration and crontab issue

0 helpful
3 replies

by ravinder.singh

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
We had encountered an issue recently whereby crontab didn't run on the solaris 2.6 server due the password expired of the login id for which crontab has been configured. No cronjob ran and cronlog only repoted "bad user" error. We would like to findout if there are any workarounds to resolve the above issue, without disabling the password expiration policy. Are there any other ways to send SMTP mail to the admin to change passwords before it expires.

3 replies

by cpfeiffe

When you set up the password expiration you also set up a warning for when the password will expire. This warning will go to the mail file for the user who's password is going to expire. Assuming that the user doesn't read the Unix mail file for anything else or if the user is the root user, you could place a .forward file in the user's home directory. In the .forward file you will put the email address of the person you want to be notified. This will forward all email for that user to the person to be notified. This makes sense if it is the root user and the email will be going to the system administrator. It is just one less place for him/her to look at mail anyway since everything is forwarded to the one account. If it is not a root level user you may get some messages you don't want but at least you'll know when the password is going to expire.

This discussion is closed to new replies.