Spams "Please run this cronjob as user amavis" from cron after upgrading 12.04 -> 14.04

[Marius Gedminas]

I've upgraded a server running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS and now I'm getting these emails from cron:

    From: Cron Daemon <email address hidden>
    To: <email address hidden>
    Subject: Cron <root@fridge> test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )
    Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 08:06:26 +0300 (EEST)

    /etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new:
    Please run this cronjob as user amavis
    run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new exited with return code 1

I see that the amavisd-new package has two cron scripts:

    $ dpkg -S amavisd-new|grep /etc/cron
    amavisd-new: /etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new
    amavisd-new: /etc/cron.d/amavisd-new

The one in /etc/cron.d/amavisd-new already runs the commands as user 'amavis', so it looks like the upgrade left a stale cron script lying around.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: amavisd-new 1:2.7.1-2ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-85.129-generic 3.13.11-ckt36
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-85-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.19
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Apr 28 08:56:28 2016
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LC_CTYPE=lt_LT.UTF-8
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: amavisd-new
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2016-04-27 (0 days ago)
mtime.conffile..etc.amavis.conf.d.15.content.filter.mode: 2015-05-04T09:16:03

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Miriam España Acebal (mirespace)]

Hi,

I came across this error while performing upgrade work on this package in Ubuntu. Sorry for the long delay in responding and thank you for taking the time to file a bug report.

The scenario described by you is confirmed and the bug was reported also to Debian here [1], but it seems to be a decision of the maintainer not to remove the script on etc/cron.daily/ , leaving this task to the user as can be seen in the file NEWS.DEBIAN in the source package:

amavisd-new (1:2.7.0-2) unstable; urgency=low

  /etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new moved to /etc/cron.d/amavisd-new. If
  you don't need the file /etc/cron.daily/amavisd-new anymore, please remove
  it.

 -- Alexander Wirt <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:51:18 +0200

This entry is missing in the binary package [2]. Therefore, please, follow the maintainer's recommendation to avoid unwanted messages.

For this reason, I'll mark this as "Opinion" and "WishList". If you or anyone consider this to have a major impact, I suggest you continue the discussion on Debian, so if there is a change of mind on this and a fix is released there, we can pick that fix to avoid increasing our Ubuntu delta.

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=671450
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=671450#79