Cron Job manipulation through Web Page

On a given UNIX systems there is a CRONTAB with CRON entries. I would
like to develop a web page that would Display the entries, allow
Editing of an entry, allow searching for a specific entry in CRON for
a given USERID and Password. The returned page for each entry must
display the page in "laymens" english, not cryptically as found in
CRON (In other words a conversion must take place to and from the
format in CRON)

I wanted to know if anyone did something similar or had ideas about
how this could be implemented.


Thanks a lot for your time

Sid

justkule@yahoo.com (siddhartha mulpuru) wrote in
news:78e9cb22.0408111403.28237373@posting.google.c om:

> I wanted to know if anyone did something similar or had ideas about
> how this could be implemented.

"That which security shall do, the search for easy administration shall
undo"

I would advise against it. However, if you were to do it then consider
doing it by pass-off files. Instead of directly editing the cron jobs,
keep a version in a seperate directory and edit those. Maybe even a sub
directory of the web site itself for easy access from the server without
having to step out of the web root. That way you can easily program some
nice GUI with helpful notes and examples.

Then have a cron job look for changes. It can do diffs as often as you
feel you need. On finding a changed file it can run checks, exclude
certain commands, email a copy to someone (maybe even waiting for an
approval email coming back), and then put the changed file into place.
That way the cron can do the "root" things so that you will not have to
write a way for the web portion to do a root thing.

Of course, its possible to write secure CGI's, but in my humble opinion
alot of security problems could be handled much easier by maintaining a
seperation of power. Have the web server do the web server stuff, then
let root see that and do the root stuff. Dont try to merge them too much.

Gandalf Parker
-- Been there, done that, fsck'd up, your turn.

"siddhartha mulpuru" <justkule@yahoo.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:78e9cb22.0408111403.28237373@posting.google.c om...
> On a given UNIX systems there is a CRONTAB with CRON entries. I
> would
> like to develop a web page that would Display the entries, allow
> Editing of an entry, allow searching for a specific entry in CRON
> for
> a given USERID and Password. The returned page for each entry must
> display the page in "laymens" english, not cryptically as found in
> CRON (In other words a conversion must take place to and from the
> format in CRON)
>
> I wanted to know if anyone did something similar or had ideas about
> how this could be implemented.

Try http://www.webmin.com

Bye

Sebastian