daily cron script fails with "onexit: command not found"

[Neal Stephenson]

Binary package hint: aide

install aide on feisty and run /etc/cron.daily/aide
produces the following:
/etc/cron.daily/aide: line 117: onexit: command not found
/etc/cron.daily/aide: line 61: onexit: command not found

[Christian Andretzky (christian-andretzky-mb)]

I can confirm this. The reason is that /etc/cron.daily/aide has a -u switch set and the shell functions and variable definitions inside are not in the right order. I'll send a version of /etc/cron.daily/aide which works for me in a separate comment from home.

[Christian Andretzky (christian-andretzky)]

Here the corrrected /etc/cron.daily/aide file

[Thomas Templin (coastgnu)]

There is a small bug in your file I suppose.
See also bug no #114730 "/var/run/aide/ missing"

The problem is in /etc/cron.daily/aide after line 39
 TMPBASE="/var/run/aide"
add:
       if [ ! -d $TMPBASE ] ; then
               # TMPBASE does not exist, create it
               mkdir $TMPBASE;
       fi

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

To get your fix included in Ubuntu, try transforming it into a debdiff (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Recipes/Debdiff) and submitting it for review (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/SponsorshipProcess).

Setting to 'incomplete' for now.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Setting to In Progress.

[Torsten Krah (tkrah)]

The TMPBASE not exists bug is still valid and no fix released - i cant believe that its so hard to get these 4 lines into the packet.
Looking at #114730 it should already be fixed, but looking at the latest release its not.

[Torsten Krah (tkrah)]

Patch attached.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

A debdiff to fix the TMPBASE issue has been submitted in bug #114730 . How is this related the bug reported here ?

The bug described here has been solved in 0.13.1-3 according to debian bug #406206 when the cron job has been refactored.

To summarize Feisty need an upgrade, this is solved in newer releases of Ubuntu, and Dapper version is too old to be affected.

Thanks for your time.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

SRU: Patch against feisty.

The fix is from debian 0.13.1-3
This is not a small patch because the cron job has been refactored after 0.13.1-2. The order of the function declarations and calls has been changed, there is now a return code and error handling has been improved.

The patch is rather safe, it affects an application rather than critical infrastructure packages, and the bug avoids aide to run correctly.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Jean-Baptiste, this is a huge patch and might possibly introduce other regressions. Isn't there a much less intrusive way to fix this "onexit" issue?

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I'll see how to do it. I'll try to send you a smaller patch this week.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Here is a much smaller change. I've moved the calls to onexit after the declaration.

The script is still very buggy but this is not a big deal because the error occurs only when the script fails to create the tmp dir. Solving all of this is too much work for a SRU and regarding the low importance of that issue. BTW all of this has been solved in Gutsy.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Jean-Baptiste, thanks, that looks muuuch better! One question, why did you swap the order of the two code blocks? Now, if no db exists, you abort after you already created the lock file, which wasn't the case before. That should be the same order as before, just to avoid introducing any new bug, right?

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Sorry for the delay :/ You're right. This time the bug has occurred between the chair and the keyboard.
Here is patch with the correct order.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Closing feisty task as won't fix because it has reach eol.