Comment 45 for bug 790538

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Morten Kjeldgaard (mok0) wrote :

Any system has its weak spots. This incident is an illustration that cron is such a weak spot and breakage can be devastating, and as Chris wrote in #41, it is lucky that sshd did not break, or things would have been a lot worse.

Offhand, I see two possible solutions:

  * cron should be built with it's own PAM security system, not relying on other system components
  * a backup system could register if cron is not running, and take appropriate action, maintaining vital tasks until cron is working again.