/etc/cron.daily modes by cronbase and systemd-utils

Stefan Schmiedl <[email protected]> Wed, 3 Jun 2026 11:11:16 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.linux.gentoo.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Greetings.

I have noticed that on my quite new box the access modes to /etc/cron.* 
are inconsistent:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root  root      110 25. Apr 16:36 cron.daily
drwxr-x--- 2 root  root       42  7. Apr 12:58 cron.hourly
drwxr-x--- 2 root  root       78 26. Apr 22:37 cron.monthly

`equery belongs` reports a few "owners" of cron.daily:

# equery belongs /etc/cron.daily
  * Searching for /etc/cron.daily ...
sys-apps/man-db-2.13.1-r1 (/etc/cron.daily)
sys-apps/plocate-1.1.24 (/etc/cron.daily)
sys-apps/systemd-utils-260.1-r1 (/etc/cron.daily)
sys-process/cronbase-0.3.7-r10 (/etc/cron.daily)

sys-process/cronbase (installed at Apr 7, 12:58, cf. cron.hourly) sets 
up these
three directories with mode 750, while systemd-utils (first installed on 
Apr 25, 10:47)
uses the portage helper `exeinto`, which in turn invokes `install -d 
...` to ensure
that the directory exists when `doexe` is called. According to `man 
install` the
default mode is set to 755, which seems to have overridden the original 750.

# install -d -m 0750 test
# ls -ld test
drwxr-x--- 2 root root 6  3. Jun 11:07 test
# install -d test
# ls -ld test
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6  3. Jun 11:07 test


Questions:

1. What is the "correct" access mode for cron.daily?
2. Is there an automatable way to find out if such inconsistencies have 
happened elsewhere?


Thanks,
s.