Cygwin 1.5.25 issue: Crontab on Windows

[Aleksander Panayotov <aleksander dot panayotov at gmail dot com>]

Hello,


I am writing to you in order to report a strange issue I encountered
while using Cygwin 1.5.25 on Windows 2k8 R2 both SE SP1 & EE SP1.

Introduction

Cygwin installation is embedded in the installation of another
product. Because of that, it is run with the same credentials as the
installation the Cygwin is embedded in. I am using a rather simplified
cygwin package containing the most basic functions.

Main content

The crontab utility, provided by Cygwin, is used to run maintenace
scripts. Since everything is done during the installation, I
encountered the following issue:

1) The installation of the product is initialized by the user X

2) During installation on the product, Cygwin installation is also
initialized by the user X

3) The user X is not allowed to use the -u option when installing the
cron service // cygrunsrv -I -u X - results in a deadlock, probably
because of the lack of permissions of the user X.

4) After finishing the installation of both cygwin & cron, some
cronjobs are added.

5) Having the cron service installed with the default user (SYSTEM),
makes it impossible to add the cronjobs to the user X' crontab.

6) When checking user X' crontab, the jobs added are shown, but even
if some of the entries are removed, the jobs continue to run (probably
because they are added using the SYSTEM user).

Summary

The cron service is installed with the default user (SYSTEM) since
there are no permissions to use -u. Jobs are also added with the user
SYSTEM. The user X cannot edit SYSTEM's cron entries and those
override everything else.

Conclusion

I would like to know if there is a way to work this around and if not,
what should I do in order to have proper deployment of the
cronjobs/cron service. I have also tested this on Cygwin 1.7.5 and I
observe the same behaviour.


Best regards,

A. Panayotov

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