CRON pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid constantly called

Troubleshooting
1

Using V6.4 on Nanopi Neo with only Netdata running headless with openssh.

journalctl shows CRON job gets repeatedly called once every minute. I don’t believe this does anything for me … is the intended?

Gord_W

Mar 21 16:33:01 DietPi CRON[22343]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:33:01 DietPi CRON[22347]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 21 16:33:01 DietPi CRON[22343]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Mar 21 16:34:01 DietPi CRON[22356]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:34:01 DietPi CRON[22360]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 21 16:34:01 DietPi CRON[22356]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Mar 21 16:35:01 DietPi CRON[22373]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:35:01 DietPi CRON[22377]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 21 16:35:01 DietPi CRON[22373]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Mar 21 16:36:01 DietPi CRON[22385]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:36:01 DietPi CRON[22389]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 21 16:36:01 DietPi CRON[22385]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Mar 21 16:37:01 DietPi CRON[22401]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:37:01 DietPi CRON[22405]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 21 16:37:01 DietPi CRON[22401]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Mar 21 16:38:01 DietPi CRON[22413]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:38:01 DietPi CRON[22417]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 21 16:38:01 DietPi CRON[22413]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Mar 21 16:39:01 DietPi CRON[22432]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 21 16:39:01 DietPi CRON[22436]: (root) CMD (for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1)

2

Was wondering if this is a bug? What can I do about it?

Gord_W

3

Hi Gordon,

Many thanks for the report.

Please can you paste results of:

cat /etc/crontab

Ticket created:
https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/1654

4

root@DietPi:~# cat /etc/crontab
#Please use dietpi-cron to change cron start times
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

m h dom mon dow user command

*/30 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.minutely
17 * * * * root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 1 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
47 1 * * 7 root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 1 1 * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )
root@DietPi:~#

5

Okay, crontab looks as it should, new cron.minutely is not the reason, as it is set to every 30 minute and the journal output looks different.

Other two possibilities, root user crontab and cron.d. Could you please provide result of:

ls -l /etc/cron.d
sudo crontab -l
6

root@DietPi:~# ls -l /etc/cron.d
total 8
-rw------- 1 root root 106 May 24 2017 make_nas_processes_faster
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 123 May 24 2017 openmediavault-rrdtoolgraph
root@DietPi:~#


root@DietPi:~# sudo crontab -l
no crontab for root
root@DietPi:~#

7

root@DietPi:~# cat /etc/cron.d/make_nas_processes_faster

          • root for i in pgrep "ftpd|nfsiod|smbd|afpd|cnid" ; do ionice -c1 -p $i ; done >/dev/null 2>&1
            root@DietPi:~#

That seems to be the offending line.

8

Seems to be part of Rock64 base image: https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-build/blob/master/package/root/etc/cron.d/make_nas_processes_faster

But I don’t get it, shouldn’t it be working to just call this once after boot e.g.? Totally spammy like this, and most users do not even use any of these services :imp:.

So just remove that file or do:

mv /etc/cron.d/make_nas_processes_faster /etc/cron.d/.make_nas_processes_faster

to let it be ignored by cron.

9

what about openmediavault-rrdtoolgraph ?
That doesn’t seem to be needed either??

root@DietPi:~# journalctl |grep omv
Mar 28 17:30:01 DietPi CRON[725]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 17:45:01 DietPi CRON[965]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 18:00:01 DietPi CRON[1191]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 18:15:01 DietPi CRON[1412]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 18:30:01 DietPi CRON[1745]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 18:45:01 DietPi CRON[1986]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 19:00:01 DietPi CRON[2219]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 19:15:01 DietPi CRON[2439]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 19:30:01 DietPi CRON[2772]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 19:45:01 DietPi CRON[3009]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 20:00:01 DietPi CRON[3235]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 20:15:01 DietPi CRON[3455]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 20:30:01 DietPi CRON[3789]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 20:45:01 DietPi CRON[4031]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 21:00:01 DietPi CRON[4255]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)
Mar 28 21:15:01 DietPi CRON[4472]: (root) CMD (/usr/sbin/omv-mkgraph >/dev/null 2>&1)

10

make_nas_processes_faster
openmediavault-rrdtoolgraph

By deleting those two files there are less entries in journalctl output.

thanks,

Gord_W

11

Not sure if there is a disconnect here :open_mouth:

You speak of the Rock64 while the NanoPi Neo uses the Allwinner H3. I guess you are just trying to reuse some code.

12

No idea what the omv job does, but having 15 min jobs is not unusual. Nextcloud and ownCloud also recommend their cron.php run every 15 minutes e.g.

Great that it worked :slight_smile:.

@Rock64 oh whoops, too fast assumption. We do not actively add this cron job as far as I can see within code. But okay it seems to be part of other device images as well. Hmm maybe we should check/ask for reason for this job every minute and see if this really makes sense if file servers are in use, perhaps adding it to our samba etc install script, but remove it as default from our images.

Quick web search shows this in combination with Rock64, Pine64 and NanoPi indeed ad well, often in combination with openmediavault. Hmm ugly thing for me…