I am trying to get a logwatch summary emailed to a central address from a cron job. The tasd was copied verbatim from a system which does this already. Both are shown below.
host1 crontab -l as root
45 7 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch --service http --service imapd --service pop3 --service sshd --service vsftpd --service zz-disk_space --service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto support@harte-lyne.ca
host2 crontab -l as root
45 7 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch --service http --service imapd --service pop3 --service sshd --service vsftpd --service zz-disk_space -- service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto support@harte-lyne.ca #Logwatch summary
My problem is that only the first gets delivered to support@harte-lyne.ca. The second gets delivered to root@host2.harte-lyne.ca and not to support. It has been a considerable time since I dealt with logwatch on the first machine and I cannot remember is there was any special configuration of logwatch itself to enable this to happen. Does anyone know what I might be overlooking?
The curious thing is that if I cut and paste the host2 cron job entry into a terminal window that is logged in as root on host2 then the logwatch report goes to support as I intend.
James B. Byrne wrote:
host1 crontab -l as root
45 7 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch --service http --service imapd --service pop3 --service sshd --service vsftpd --service zz-disk_space --service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto support@harte-lyne.ca
host2 crontab -l as root
45 7 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch --service http --service imapd --service pop3 --service sshd --service vsftpd --service zz-disk_space -- service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto support@harte-lyne.ca #Logwatch summary
Hello, I'm afraid I cannot address your specific question, however this may still be helpful...
I recommend moving all of those command line switches from your crontab into the config file(s).
The defaults are defined in /usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/logwatch.conf
The logwatch maintainers intend users to override those defaults in /etc/logwatch/conf/logwatch.conf
If you move your customizations to /etc/logwatch/conf/logwatch.conf, then you can call logwatch without any switches at all.
Also, something I do and find useful is to leave delivery of the logwatch emails set to the default - root@localhost. Then forward root's mail to my external system@domain account. This way I get any/all system generated e-mail to root (like an mdadm failed array event!), not just logwatch.
Hope that helps, Andy Hull
On Fri, October 23, 2009 14:22, James B. Byrne wrote:
I am trying to get a logwatch summary emailed to a central address from a cron job. The tasd was copied verbatim from a system which does this already. Both are shown below.
host1 crontab -l as root
45 7 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch --service http --service imapd --service pop3 --service sshd --service vsftpd --service zz-disk_space --service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto support@harte-lyne.ca
host2 crontab -l as root
45 7 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch --service http --service imapd --service pop3 --service sshd --service vsftpd --service zz-disk_space -- service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto support@harte-lyne.ca #Logwatch summary
My problem is that only the first gets delivered to support@harte-lyne.ca. The second gets delivered to root@host2.harte-lyne.ca and not to support. It has been a considerable time since I dealt with logwatch on the first machine and I cannot remember is there was any special configuration of logwatch itself to enable this to happen. Does anyone know what I might be overlooking?
I thought after the pain I went through finding the solution for this that some here might be amused to learn what the problem turned out to be. Note this portion of the second, misbehaving, cron entry example:
zz-disk_space -- service zz-network --service zz-sys --mailto
There is an errant space between -- and service for the --service flag to the zz-network argument; and this caused all the difficulty.
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Andrew Hull -
James B. Byrne