[Popcon-developers] Bug#668784: "su: Authentication failure\n(Ignored)" error message when from cron job

[Bill Allombert]

On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 12:22:18PM +0100, Raf Czlonka wrote:
> Package: popularity-contest
> Version: 1.53
> Severity: normal
> 
> Hi,
> 
> When popularity-contest cron job runs I get an error message:
> 
> su: Authentication failure
> (Ignored)
> 
> adding "set -x" to the script reveals that the line responsible is:
> 
> su -s /bin/sh -c /usr/sbin/popularity-contest nobody
> 
> When run manually it doesn't exist straight away after the error message
> so I presume that popularity-contest actually finishes its job, i.e.
> SUBMITTED=no changes to SUBMITTED=yes.

Hello Raf,

Do you know why 'su' complains ?
Does 
su -s /bin/sh -c /usr/sbin/popularity-contest nobody
fail ?
Does
su -s /bin/sh -c /bin/ls nobody
work ?

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.