Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Stroller <stroller@××××××××××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] app-admin/mcelog daily cronjob?
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 13:40:07
Message-Id: 931458D2-51AE-47CF-97B2-8DD1EFBBE56A@stellar.eclipse.co.uk
1 I set up a new machine a couple of months ago, and for some time I've been getting an email each day:
2
3 Subject: Cron <root@host> test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons
4 fopen: Permission denied
5
6
7 Taking a look at /etc/cron.daily/ shows only one odd one out:
8
9 $ sudo ls -lh /etc/cron.daily/
10 total 16K
11 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 180 Feb 4 20:28 logrotate
12 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 196 Mar 3 09:48 man-db
13 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 141 Apr 16 14:09 mcelog
14 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.3K Feb 4 23:53 mlocate
15
16
17 I *assume* that mcelog is the cron job which is causing this error, although the error message is not much to go on. It doesn't have execute permissions set, though, so that's what leads me towards this (tentative) conclusion.
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19 I dunno, running it manually gives a different error:
20
21 $ sudo /etc/cron.daily/mcelog
22 sudo: /etc/cron.daily/mcelog: command not found
23 $
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25 Nevertheless, when I look at the http://mcelog.org/ homepage, specified in the package description, it says:
26
27 Traditionally mcelog was run as a cronjob, but this usage is
28 deprecated now. The modern way to run it is to start it at
29 boot up time and run it always as a daemon.
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31 I tried unmerging app-admin/mcelog and the cron.daily file is removed; then remerging (the latest stable version - 1.0_pre3_p20130621-r1) and it's reinstalled with the same permissions.
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33 So I guess my question is: is this a bug with the app-admin/mcelog package?
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35 I've got another system which isn't showing this problem, and mcelog is not installed. And the system *seems* to be running just fine, despite the assertion at mcelog.or that "mcelog is required by … Linux kernels … to log machine checks and should run on all Linux systems that need error handling."
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37 On the system which is showing this problem, app-admin/mcelog is in the world file - and it was before I started investigating this problem (I know this because I have a clone of that system which I took a few weeks ago), although I don't recall ever choosing to install it.
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39 What is mcelog, and why do I need it, please?
40
41 Stroller.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] app-admin/mcelog daily cronjob? Tom Wijsman <TomWij@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-user] app-admin/mcelog daily cronjob? Randy Barlow <randy@×××××××××××××××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-user] app-admin/mcelog daily cronjob? Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk>