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User's cron jobs fail to run. Error in cron log: "!bad user" (Doc ID 1010144.1)

Last updated on JUNE 13, 2023

Applies to:

Solaris Operating System - Version 8 and later
All Platforms

Goal

This document describes how to resolve user's cron jobs fail to run with the following error:

Error in cron log: !bad user


Cron processes run as root (superuser). When cron starts a user's cron job, it needs to set the group id(gid) and user id(uid) of that cronjob, to that of the user who owns it. If the user's account has a problem, then the cron job will fail to run, and the /var/cron/log file will show the following entry:
!bad user

Solution

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