[CentOS] Cron sending to root after changing MAILTO

Thu Jul 20 14:26:49 UTC 2017
Chad Cordero <ccordero at csusb.edu>

Well, I feel silly.  There are three places MAILTO can affect crond: /etc/crontab, /etc/crond.d/0hourly, and /etc/anacrontab.  Once I set this in these 3 files, I started getting mail from crond.  Thank you all for your help.

 


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Chad Cordero
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From: CentOS <centos-bounces at centos.org> on behalf of Richard <lists-centos at listmail.innovate.net>
Reply-To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
Date: Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 6:54 AM
To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Cron sending to root after changing MAILTO

 

 

Date: Thursday, July 20, 2017 02:25:52 +0000

From: Richard <lists-centos at listmail.innovate.net>

Date: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 23:31:10 +0000

From: Chad Cordero <ccordero at csusb.edu>

It’s being rejected before it even reaches the mailbox, so

forwarding won’t work.  Crond should really be using the MAILTO

variable and it’s not.

In my testing, this worked as advertised. Changing the "MAILTO=" in

/etc/crontab from the default "root" to either a local username or a

remote address resulted in the crontab messages being delivered to

the desired mailboxes. I think I'd put a test command into the

crontab and watch the logs to see what might be going on --

including making certain that the crontab is reloading correctly

after changing the "mailto" value.

Separately, but related, did you run newaliases or postalias after

you added the entry to "root:" in /etc/aliases?

 

Re-reading earlier messages, are the commands in question being

invoked out of /etc/crontab, /etc/cron.daily, etc. or  user-level

crontabs?

 

The "mailto" value is crontab file specific, so setting it in

/etc/crontab would only effect commands run from there (a file that

isn't used much any longer). As the /etc/cron.daily, etc. jobs are

now run from /etc/anacrontab you'd need to adjust the "mailto" in

that file for things run that way. If run from a user-level crontab

the "mailto" needs to be in that user's crontab file. [cron.hourly is

run out of /etc/cron.d/0hourly, not anacrontab, and has its own

"mailto".]

 

 

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