CentOS - Jun 2011 - Chicken and egg question: passwd and cronjob

Hi all,
Let's say I activate password expiration for every account (including
root) for every 90 days.
I understand that cronjob for root will fail when the password expires.

The question is, if I setup a cronjob every 90 days to renew the root
password like: echo diFficulT123 | passwd --stdin root
will it work?

I mean at second 1 on the 90th day, which will run first?
- The cronjob to renew the password
- Or the password expiration, thus preventing the cronjob from running.

Pardon me if it's silly.
I know it's bad to change password from script, but the root acc is
not used at all and has been disabled from logon remotely.
I just need it to keep various cronjob to keep running. Any other
advise are welcome.

On 06/22/2011 11:46 PM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
> I mean at second 1 on the 90th day, which will run first?
> - The cronjob to renew the password
> - Or the password expiration, thus preventing the cronjob from running.
> 
just setup the password renewing job to run one minute earlier

or

don't expire the root passwd

-- 
KevinO

On Thursday 23 Jun 2011 07:46:01 Fajar Priyanto wrote:
> I understand that cronjob for root will fail when the password expires.
AFAIK, account does not need to have a password at all for cron to work.

Apart from that if you're going to automatically reset root's password
you may
as well just avoid expiring it at all.


-- 
Michael Gliwinski
Henderson Group Information Services
9-11 Hightown Avenue, Newtownabby, BT36 4RT
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