KB484174: How to fix the "Failed to enable auto-restart" error encountered during Services Registration startup

Software Engineer, Principal • MicroStrategy

This article addresses the error received when starting the Services Registration service in a Linux environment. This article also provides steps to troubleshoot this error.

Description

In a Linux environment, when starting the Services Registration service, you may receive the following message:
Error: Failed to enable auto-restart, please check if the user has permission to create a crontab entry

Service Registration starts, but the attempt to enable auto-restart fails.

Solution

When this error occurs, you should check if the current account has the permission to add a new crontab entry for Services Registration. By default, there are 2 files named

cron.allow

and

cron.deny

under the

/etc

folder. These files are used for controlling the crontab permission. Superuser privileges are required to edit or create these two files.
To check and enable the crontab permission of the current account, refer to the following steps:

Open a new terminal with root user.
Go to the
```
/etc 
```
folder by running the command:
```
 cd/etc
```
Check if both
```
 cron.allow 
```
and
```
cron.deny
```
exist by running the command:
```
Is |grep -i cron.
```
If
```
cron.allow 
```
exists, only users who are listed in this file can create, edit, display, or remove crontab entries. In this case, add mstruser to a new line in
```
cron.allow
```
.

If
```
cron.allow 
```
does not exist, all users not defined in
```
cron.deny 
```
can create, edit, display, or remove crontab entries. In this case, please check
```
cron.deny 
```
and delete mstruser from the file.
If neither
```
cron.allow
```
nor
```
cron.deny 
```
exist, superuser privileges are required to run the crontab commands. In this case, you can grant mstr-user superuser privileges, or create
```
cron.allow
```
and then add mstruser, or other users, to the file.
Restart the running Services Registration service with mstruser and check if it succeeds to enable auto-restart.

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Details

Knowledge Article

Published:

April 7, 2020

Last Updated:

December 18, 2020

Solution

When this error occurs, you should check if the current account has the permission to add a new crontab entry for Services Registration. By default, there are 2 files named

cron.allow

cron.deny

/etc

Open a new terminal with root user.

Go to the

/etc

folder by running the command:

 cd/etc

Check if both

 cron.allow

and

cron.deny

exist by running the command:

Is |grep -i cron.

cron.allow

exists, only users who are listed in this file can create, edit, display, or remove crontab entries. In this case, add mstruser to a new line in

cron.allow