Disable Cron Jobs for a Specific User
I Have a List of Jobs in the Crontabs for User1, User2. I Want to Prevent the Jobs of User2 from Running. I Tried Listing User2 in Cron. Deny, but That Only...
I have a list of jobs in the crontabs for user1, user2. I want to prevent the jobs of user2 from running.
I tried listing user2 in cron.deny, but that only prevents him from accessing his crontab. The jobs listed in user2's crontab still get executed.
How do I disable cron jobs for a specific user?
5 Answers
Brute force!
crontab -u fred -e
%s/^/#/
:wq
There's probably a more elegant way to do it, but unless you are doing this all the time, use the hammer you have.
The easiest way to disable the crontab for a specific user is to locate her crontab and rename it. The Debian man page for cron says:
cron searches its spool area (/var/spool/cron/crontabs) for crontab
files (which are named after accounts in /etc/passwd); crontabs found
are loaded into memory.
So just rename the file to something that is not in the passwd, usually by giving it a suffix like disabled, offline, dead or similar.
mv -vi /var/spool/cron/crontabs/user2 /var/spool/cron/crontabs/user2.disabled
On Debian (and related systems like Ubuntu) this produces the following entry in /var/log/syslog:
(user2.disabled) ORPHAN (no passwd entry)
Make sure to also add user2 to the file /etc/cron.deny, otherwise the user will be able to create a new crontab for herself.
Re-enable the user's crontab by deleting the entry from /etc/cron.deny and renaming her crontab:
mv -vi /var/spool/cron/crontabs/user2.disabled /var/spool/cron/crontabs/user2
Delete /var/spool/cron/user1 or user2 ? and you also want to add these user names to /etc/cron.deny otherwise they can add those cron jobs back
crontab -r username works on Solaris to remove the crontab for a given username.
If -r doesn't work for you, then try:
su username 'sh -c "crontab /dev/null"'
Quicker to type and easier to script than crontab -e.
If you want to block the crontab job for a particular user make sure that your logged in with root user,root user only have access for crontab files. 1.Then go to the dir /etc/cron.d in this directory you can see that cron.deny file,make an enter of particular user name which user want to block by using vi editor or orther.
David Miller brings 15 years of experience in global economics, personal finance strategy, and market dynamics. He specializes in turning complex economic trends into actionable insights for everyday readers.
