Re: [gentoo-user] Odd cron errors

[Mick]

On Sunday 13 Jul 2014 10:20:47 Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 July 2014 15:01:33 I wrote:
> > On Tuesday 01 July 2014 12:13:39 Mick wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 01 Jul 2014 10:48:12 Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > > Hell list,
> > > >
> > > > I don't know when it started, but recently I've been getting error
> > > > e-mails
> > > > from cron, thus:
> > > >
> > > > Password: 501 Not authorised --- Reply not authenticated
> > > >
> > > > They're all timed at 03:10:0x, i.e. one minute after cron.daily tasks
> > > > are
> > > > run, and they occur at 7- or 8-day intervals. The only files in
> > > > /etc/cron.daily are logrotate and man-db, neither of which I've
> > > > touched.
> > > >
> > > > I've been expiring that e-mail folder at 30 days, so I have only four
> > > > instances - I've now set the lifetime to 366 days to allow a history
> > > > to build up.
> > > >
> > > > Anyone have a clue to this? It's hardly earth-shattering, but it
> > > > might be
> > > > good to find out what's going on.
> > >
> > > Only to confirm that I have been getting these on an old 32bit laptop.
> > > I suspect that they are caused by chrony which I run on this PC and
> > > some passwd setup that chronyc requires to connect to the timeservers
> > > and update
> > > RTC et al, via chronyd.  I have not looked into configuring it beyond a
> > > rather superficial "it'll do for now" level and have not yet added any
> > > chrony.keys. When I get a moment I will revisit the configuration to
> > > add the required key, but will need to spend some time going through
> > > the man pages first.
> >
> > I was beginning to think I was the only one still running chrony :)
> >
> > My chrony does have a key set up, so I don't think that's the cause. Now
> > that you remind me, I changed the setup on 31/5. The Atom LAN server has
> > an appalling hardware clock, so I changed things around so that both the
> > Atom and this box synchronise over the Internet, and they peer with each
> > other.
> >
> > Maybe I should split them apart to make them independent. I'll watch them
> > for a while first though, to see if a pattern emerges.
> >
> > Thanks for the idea Mick.
>
> Well, a week ago I did split the two chronys (the one on the server and the
> one on the workstation), but I got another mail at 03:10:05 today. So I
> guess that isn't it.

Please try this:

Go the PC that keeps getting these messages in its logs.  Run:

$ chrony

chronyc> password
password: <manually_enter_your_chrony_Passwd>

If the passwd is wrong, or some characters are incompatible with the terminal, 
then you will get:

"Password: 501 Not authorised --- Reply not authenticated"


You can test this by entering the wrong passwd initially.  Unfortunately, I no 
longer have the PC running chrony to test it here.

-- 
Regards,
Mick