Cron and PAM Issues

When you try editing cron, you get a message similar to:

root@ws1:/etc/pam.d# crontab -e

Permission denied
You (root) are not allowed to access to (crontab) because of pam configuration.

/var/log/secure shows messages similar to:

Jul 25 14:07:17 ws1 crontab: pam_access(crond:account): access denied for user `root' from `cron'

To fix this issue, ensure that cron can be accessed by the user. In the case above, 'root' to 'cron'. Do this by editing /etc/security/access.conf with the following line at the top of the file:

+ : root : cron crond

See Also

• Access.conf