On Wednesday 05 May 2010 00:17:09 Mick wrote: > Hi All, > > I am getting a bit confused from the messages that I receive in my gmail > account sent from my crontab. > > First, is related to the title which is: > > Cron <r...@mylaptop> test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons > > I am not sure what this "test -x" part represents? > > > The second question is related to the output of chkrootkit, which is run by > the cron.weekly and emails stuff that don't make much sense to me: > ========================================== > $Ld$ Ll$(Lt$0HÄ8ÃAWAVAUIýATUSHH°èHAÇHÝHL$ØMäITMt$(HÒtdfDIt$ > Hötm½(Ht8fLïèHþÿÿITHÃHÆLïèHßèHîHÅ(It$ > HuÊIMôIÆ(HÒu¢DÿèH1À[]A\A]A^A_ÃLæLïèþÿÿëÊLïH5H421ÒèoþÿÿDÿèëÃDS1öH°H;èHß[éCop > yright (C) the VideoLAN VLC media player developersLicensed under the terms > of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.Freebox TV listing > (French ISP free.fr services)http/shout- > winamp://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/newxml.phtmlhttp/shout- > winamp://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/newtvlister.phtml?alltv=1http://mafreebox.f > reebox.fr/freeboxtv/playlist.m3uhttp://www.canalplus.fr/index.php?pid=1784s > houtshoutcast- limitShoutcastShoutcast radio > listingsservices_discoveryshoutcastShoutcastTVShoutcast TV > listingsshoutcasttvfrenchtvFrench TVFreeboxfreeboxStarting FreeboxStarting > FrenchTVStarting ShoutTVStarting ShoutRadiono-playlist- > autostartItemAddedShoutcast RadioShoutcast TVFreebox TVvlc://nopCanal +Les > Guignolshttp-forward-cookieszRL«ACF0lsJG ,A¤,A¼,AÔ)aìog0...@4dûbbb > E(A0A8D@| GCC: (Gentoo 4.3.4 p1.0, pie-10.1.5) > 4.3.4.symtab.strtab.shstrtab.rela.text.data.bss.rodata.str1.8.rodata.str1.1 > .rela.data.rel.ro.local.rela.eh_frame.comment.note.GNU- stack @&1...@2s > ========================================== > > Now I happened to notice that the above legible references to vlc are from > the "services discovery" list that the vlc player shows under > Media/Services. Not sure what they are doing in chckrootkit ... is it > telling me that it just scanned all such content? When I run it manually > it looks just the same and follows a long output following "Searching for > suspect PHP files..." I am not sure I understand why chkrootkit is > emailing these to me and if I need to do something about it.
cron captures the output from any program it runs. If there is any output at all, it will mail it to you. In this case, something launched by run-crons is spewing something to STDOUT and you are getting it in your inbox. As to what it means, well it looks like garbage. So you will have to run the chkrootkit program yourself and debug how it is going wrong and fix it. This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with cron itself. The output looks like standard banner garbage that apps often write to the terminal when launched. I suspect an omitted "> /dev/null" somewhere -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
