$HOME changed from 6.2 to 6.3 and 7.0 ?!

[Ulrich Spoerlein]

On Fri, 29.02.2008 at 12:52:11 +0100, Thomas Krause wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> after upgrading from 6.2R to 6.3R my daily jobs, which are normaly
> executed from /etc/daily.local, are not longer started.
> The entry in daily.local is
> $HOME/bin/save-conf.sh
> 6.2R executed /root/bin/save-conf.sh
> 6.3R (and 7.0R) tries to start /var/log/bin/save-conf.bin
> 
> Why? I cannot find such a homedir in /etc/passwd!

Wrong place to look, it is set via /etc/crontab:

% more /etc/crontab
# /etc/crontab - root's crontab for FreeBSD
#
# $FreeBSD: src/etc/crontab,v 1.32 2002/11/22 16:13:39 tom Exp $
#
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
HOME=/var/log
#
# ...
#
# Perform daily/weekly/monthly maintenance.
1       3       *       *       *       root    periodic daily
15      4       *       *       6       root    periodic weekly
30      5       1       *       *       root    periodic monthly


If this has changed from before, I guess it would be due to a new shell
forking which always reset $HOME. Thus, it only worked before by sheer
luck :)

Cheers,
Ulrich Spoerlein
-- 
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool,
than to speak, and remove all doubt.