Author Topic: security update causes CRON: Module is unknown error  (Read 3837 times)

kerridge0

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security update causes CRON: Module is unknown error
« on: June 01, 2011, 03:58:58 pm »
I've just discovered that a bug in an upgrade caused my cron jobs to stop running, with the error Module is unknown appearing in syslog. This might apply to anyone who has automatic security updates installed?

The problem can be solved by restarting cron:-

/etc/init.d/cron restart

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pam/+bug/790538
"
Upgrading libpam-modules from 1.1.1-4ubuntu1 to 1.1.1-4ubuntu2.2, cron stopped working, just gives a log message "Module is unknown". This happened during unattended-upgrades this night, so there might be a lot of people who didn't realize that yet.
"

In case it's useful to anyone

robb

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Re: security update causes CRON: Module is unknown error
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2011, 12:32:18 pm »
Maybe I'm just a 'dumb' Microsoft admin, but how can you set a server to do automatic updates? IMO this is NOT a best practice. Always make a snapshot/break raid etc.... before you do anything to a server so you have an option to revert to previous situation.

However, great work to find the solution when the bad update has been applied...

kerridge0

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Re: security update causes CRON: Module is unknown error
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2011, 01:13:15 pm »
Well, I appreciate what you are saying... but that tickbox in the zentyal gui was just too tempting just this once! (only 1 of my servers had it ticked, just for testing purposes...)

also discussed on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/hp7t2/do_your_apps_rely_on_cron_jobs_ubuntu_unattended/

rickyx

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Re: security update causes CRON: Module is unknown error
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2011, 10:14:17 pm »
Maybe I'm just a 'dumb' Microsoft admin, but how can you set a server to do automatic updates? IMO this is NOT a best practice. Always make a snapshot/break raid etc.... before you do anything to a server so you have an option to revert to previous situation.

However, great work to find the solution when the bad update has been applied...

You are 100% right.
I just scare to update server with one thousand patch more that small updates: if something goes wrong i feel more confident that I can solve the problem.

That is probably why I just fallen in the same issue...  ::)