Hi. Default /etc/crontab for fcron contains: 59 * * * * rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.hourly 9 3 * * * rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.daily 19 4 * * 6 rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.weekly 29 5 1 * * rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.monthly */10 * * * * test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons In documentation we see: "Note that the shell command may be preceded by a user name". It works in such a way: it gets first term from that string, checks if there is user with such name. And it it exists, fcron runs the rest of the string under that user. It is easy to guess what will happen if you will have user named rm or test - the things will got broken. This is what can be seen in strace of fcron when you have user named test in your system: execve("/bin/bash", ["/bin/bash", "-c", "-x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons"], [/* 5 vars */]) Bash complains on bad argument and command fails with error. I think "root" user name should be implicitly specified before the command in /etc/crontab to avoid such errors.
This /etc/crontab you are showing isn't up to date. The reported problem was addressed via https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=531e27c45e1f413da44d8a51ece0f59e454586fb aka bug 525242 (we picked 'Either reference executables in full' as solution). If you disagree with the fix/still have a problem please comment. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 525242 ***
