Cannot set up cron as a service on corporate PC

Tue Dec 12 10:48:20 GMT 2023

On Mon, Dec 11, 2023 at 02:07:08PM +0000, Jon Turney wrote:
> On 09/12/2023 21:55, Adam Dinwoodie via Cygwin wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've been trying to set up Cygwin cron to work as a service on my work
> > PC. I'm able to get it working just fine on a Windows system where I'm
> > using a personal Microsoft account, but when I attempt the same process
> > using on a Windows system using my work account, I get the following
> > error:
> > 
> > cygrunsrv: Error starting a service: StartService: Win32 error 1068:
> > The dependency service or group failed to start.
> > 
> > I also note that in the failing scenario, I see the following log appear
> > at this time in Windows Event Viewer:
> > 
> > > This computer is configured as a member of a workgroup, not as a
> > > member of a domain. The Netlogon service does not need to run in this
> > > configuration.
> > 
> > I've reproduced this behaviour in virtual machines using fresh
> > installations of Windows, and where the only actions taken were to
> > bootstrap, log in, install Cygwin including cygrunsrv and cron, then
> > attempt to set up cron as a service. I've attached copies of the MinTTY
> > output and the cronbug.txt files (which appear to include the normal
> > cygcheck -srv output, so I've not added those separately. I've also
> > attached the full Event Viewer log
> > 
> > My guess is that something about how Windows manages user accounts has
> > changed over the years, and cygrunsrv hasn't been updated to cope, but
> > that's a very wild guess. Searching the archives hasn't got me very
>> You might test this hypothesis by attempting to run 'true', or perhaps it
> needs to be something that runs forever like 'sleep infinity' and see if you
> get the same error about netlogon?
>> (Or are you able to run other cygwin services without problems?)

Good question! Looks like this is common to all services installed with
cygrunsrv and a specific user:
 # cygrunsrv -I sleeptest -p /usr/bin/sleep -a infinity -u EUROPE+adinwoodie
 Enter password of user `EUROPE\adinwoodie':
 Re-enter, please:
 # cygrunsrv -Q sleeptest
 Service : sleeptest
 Current State : Stopped
 Command : /usr/bin/sleep infinity
 # cygrunsrv -S sleeptest
 cygrunsrv: Error starting a service: StartService: Win32 error 1068:
 The dependency service or group failed to start.
So I think that strongly points towards either (a) an issue with
cygrunsrv, or (b) using usernames like this is just doomed to failure
and cron-config might benefit from suggesting better options or at least
warning there aren't any.