Query on entries in aut log

[a1n]

Hi, I am not very familiar with authentication on linux and have a question to understand the log entries.

About every five minutes there are the following lines in the auth.log.

Feb 7 13:10:01 b3 CRON[6511]: pam_env(cron:session): Unable to open env file: /etc/default/locale: No such file or directory
Feb 7 13:10:01 b3 CRON[6510]: pam_env(cron:session): Unable to open env file: /etc/default/locale: No such file or directory
Feb 7 13:10:01 b3 CRON[6511]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Feb 7 13:10:01 b3 CRON[6510]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Feb 7 13:10:02 b3 CRON[6510]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Feb 7 13:10:03 b3 CRON[6511]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root

It would seem cron is trying to execute as root, but cannot find a file (/etc/default/locale).

I have checked, I have not set up cron jobs as root (crontab is empty for root).

Any clues?

Regards, a1n

[RandomUsername]

I'm not sure about the missing file but I wouldn't worry about cron executing. There are system housekeeping jobs that run regularly (look in /etc/cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly, cron.monthly and cron.d). Also, cron checks every minute (I think) for new and changed jobs.

[kjellberg]

Im interested in learning what this is too.

[DanielM]

The file /etc/default/locale is created by the command update-locale. I guess if you haven't ever issued that command (which you probably have no use in doing if you don't talk a weird language with weird characters) the file doesn't exist. No problem there.

My /etc/default/local says:

Code: Select all

#  File generated by update-locale
LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=sv_SE.UTF-8

...which means my system uses UTF-8 and swedish characters.

/Daniel

[kjellberg]

update-locale: command does not exist.

[DanielM]

update-locale: command does not exist.

It's in the locales package. Just do an "apt-get install locales".

Tip: http://packages.debian.org. Insanely good place for searching for packages!

/Daniel