Stephen Gran said: > On Sun, May 29, 2005 at 03:29:03PM -0700, Dennis Peterson said: >> Stephen Gran said: And I said in the next post this is not the way I'd >> do it. And you've spoiled the fun that was sure to come in the OP's >> next question, so let's get right to the issue at hand. > > I am not sure what the point of giving bad advice to someone who clearly > has difficulty understanding the ramifications of the bad advice is. I > guess giving good advice the first time around would spoil the fun, > though.
It was step one of a solution set. That particular point was to indicate the MAILTO env var was not necessarily the best way to achieve the KISS principle. In fact the enire cron entry needed help. > >> The problem of the OP and which has not been addressed by anyone >> (except me last week) is that many of you people insist on starting or >> running this stuff as user root. If the OP had created a cronjob for >> user clamav or whomever the run-as user is the crontab would have >> truely met the KISS test (another bit of an insult from someone else, >> eh). > > Well, let's see ... ah yes, my packages do set the cron job to run as > whichever user owns the DatabaseDirectory (clamav by default). So I > guess I am not one of 'you people', so no problem there. If you're not > familiar with the KISS principle, and it's self-deprecatory connotations, > I can't help you there. And you didn't ask for help and so didn't need it. So far that's two - probably three including Matt. > >> Errors would automatically go to user clamav's inbox and that can and >> arguably should be aliased to the cognizant adminstrator. No need for >> tests or mail or pipes or redirected stdxxx. Simple. > > Well then why didn't you offer that solution up front, instead of > playing games with the OP? Again, I don't see the point in advising > something you are saying is insecure. Do you actually have a good > reason for giving advice you think is bad, or do you just like having > fun at someone else's expense? The OP didn't understand the basics. I was developing that just as I did last week when big sig guy got his speedos in a knot. > >> > Those who live in glass houses and so forth. Can we try to keep a >> > civil tongue, at least when you have your foot in your mouth? >> >> Can I use your response as an example of civility? > > Absolutely. > > You gave advice that > a) didn't do what was expected (generate an email only on errors) > b) was insecure by your definition > > and then you were condescending to the OP, and rude to others who tried > to help the OP. If you want me to be rude, I can, but that wasn't it. > > That wasn't rude, it was just pointing out the obvious. The advice I gave was part of a series I'd intended to offer. The entirety of it is complete. The rude part began with the KISS expansion which I didn't provide. And it wasn't even the best KISS example which is why I got interested. The additional fully qualified path advice is mentoring and it is good advice. In a workgroup (shared) environment you should always ensure all your scripts and crontabs use fully qualified paths or you are at the whim of mistakes others make. It is considered a best practice. If you need additional reading check the startup scripts on your system. I don't find it rude to mentor people who are in over their heads. After 30 years of doing this it just flows naturally. Offer some info - time to digest - expand it, refine it. There's no way to get there in a single post/brain dump. Oh - and I was pointing out the obvious. dp _______________________________________________ http://lurker.clamav.net/list/clamav-users.html
