Your message dated Thu, 03 Apr 2025 12:34:28 +0000
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Bug#1101921: fixed in cron 3.0pl1-195
has caused the Debian Bug report #1101921,
regarding crontab.5: example for use of \% disappears when manpage is rendered
to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
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--
1101921: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1101921
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Package: cron
Version: 3.0pl1-162
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
A new line in root's crontab led to this error mail:
/bin/sh: 1: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string
It took a while to find the cause because the string was not reported in the
mail (-> wishlist).
It is because of this line
34 2 * * * /usr/local/scripts/fsdu /var > /tmp/fsdu.$(/bin/date
"+%Y%m%d-%H%M%S")
The % is an escape character that is replaced with \n by cron. We weren't aware
of this,
The crontab(5) manpage has an explanation of this and an example for the use as
a newline:
0 22 * * 1-5 mail -s "It's 10pm" joe%Joe,%%Where are your kids?%
An example for the escaped % is missing. Digging deeper, we found this in
/usr/share/man/man5/crontab.5.gz:
33 22 * * * expr $(date +\%s) / 60 / 60 / 24 \% 9 > /dev/null ||
echo Wax the floor.
The backslashes are eaten by *roff rendering. Replacing them with double
backslashes yields this:
33 22 * * * expr $(date +\%s) / 60 / 60 / 24 \% 9 > /dev/null ||
echo Wax the floor.
I'm submitting this as severity normal because it took us a significant amount
of time to analyze and work around.
-- Package-specific info:
--- EDITOR:
--- /usr/bin/editor:
/usr/bin/vim.tiny
--- /usr/bin/crontab:
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root crontab 43648 Mar 2 2023 /usr/bin/crontab
--- /var/spool/cron:
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 1024 Mar 16 2021 /var/spool/cron
--- /var/spool/cron/crontabs:
drwx-wx--T 2 root crontab 1024 Apr 2 08:43 /var/spool/cron/crontabs
--- /etc/cron.d:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 10 07:41 /etc/cron.d
--- /etc/cron.daily:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 28 07:42 /etc/cron.daily
--- /etc/cron.hourly:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 26 12:48 /etc/cron.hourly
--- /etc/cron.monthly:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 26 12:50 /etc/cron.monthly
--- /etc/cron.weekly:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 26 12:50 /etc/cron.weekly
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.10
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-32-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages cron depends on:
ii cron-daemon-common 3.0pl1-162
ii init-system-helpers 1.65.2
ii libc6 2.36-9+deb12u10
ii libpam-runtime 1.5.2-6+deb12u1
ii libpam0g 1.5.2-6+deb12u1
ii libselinux1 3.4-1+b6
ii sensible-utils 0.0.17+nmu1
Versions of packages cron recommends:
ii sendmail-bin [mail-transport-agent] 8.17.1.9-2+deb12u2
Versions of packages cron suggests:
pn anacron <none>
pn checksecurity <none>
ii logrotate 3.21.0-1
Versions of packages cron is related to:
pn libnss-ldap <none>
pn libnss-ldapd <none>
pn libpam-ldap <none>
pn libpam-mount <none>
pn nis <none>
pn nscd <none>
-- debconf-show failed
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Source: cron
Source-Version: 3.0pl1-195
Done: Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]>
We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
cron, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.
A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.
Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed. If you
have further comments please address them to [email protected],
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.
Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]> (supplier of updated cron package)
(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing [email protected])
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Format: 1.8
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2025 12:04:09 +0200
Source: cron
Architecture: source
Version: 3.0pl1-195
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]>
Changed-By: Georges Khaznadar <[email protected]>
Closes: 1071709 1079207 1085713 1086495 1101921
Changes:
cron (3.0pl1-195) unstable; urgency=medium
.
* declared sensible-editor as the command used by `crontab -e` in the
manpage crontab.1; Closes: #1079207
* now all manpages are created by xsltproc from XML source files.
I checked that '[g|n]roff -mandoc -t -ww -b -z -K utf8 cron.8'
report no longer any error. Closes: #1085713
* declared that cron is lauched by systemd. Closes: #1086495
* as the changes suggested by Paul Wise <[email protected]> about
bug report #956953 are now reveted, due to the lack of implementation
and test, errors which were reported about the version 3.0pl1-190
in experimental are cleared. Closes: #1071709
* checked that the line "33 22 * * * expr $(date +\%s) ..." is no
longer produced by the source file debian/crontab.5.xml; instead,
% characters are properly escaped in the examples:
$ man -l debian/crontab.5 | grep '\\%'
0 4 8-14 * * test $(date +\%u) -eq 6 && echo "2nd Saturday"
0 * * * * [ "$(date +\%R)" = 00:00 ] && run_some_script
0 4 * * Sat [ "$(date +\%e)" = "$(LANG=C ncal ...
So this Closes: #1101921
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Files:
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cron_3.0pl1-195_amd64.buildinfo
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--- End Message ---
