crontab and mail
SiKing
I am having problems with automatic mails in crontab. Most documentation that I
have seen has something like the following:
Normally, the output generated by every command in the system crontab is
automatically mailed to the system administrator (or, in the case of a user
crontab, to the user who owns it).
My question is: what happens when the machine does not have any kind of a mail
daemon running? Should the crontab still produce a /var/mail/$USER file?
I am trying this on Solaris and cannot get the mail file. The /var/cron/log
says: "mail: ERROR signal 13" on a Sol9 machine, and "! could not obtain latest
contract from popen(3C): No such process Tue May 15 12:13:00 2007" on a Sol10
machine.
I am aware of generating my own log files from crontab using the 1> std_out and
2> std_err redirects. I am just wanted to find out about the above.
TIA for any help, SiKing.
--
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GE d+(-) s+: a@ C+ ULAHS++$ P- L+>++ E--- W++ N++ o !K w--(+) O- M?>+ V? PS+
PE+(++) Y+ PGP- t+ 5 X R !tv b+ DI(+) D G e++ h---- r+++@ y++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
Patrick
SiKing <nos...@noway.invalid> wrote:
> My question is: what happens when the machine does not have any kind
> of a mail daemon running? Should the crontab still produce a
> /var/mail/$USER file?
> I am trying this on Solaris and cannot get the mail file. The
> /var/cron/log says: "mail: ERROR signal 13" ...
There's your answer right there. Probably the main purpose of running an
smtp daemon on the loopback interface is to handle mail from crond. The mail
file is generated by the Local Delivery Agent (LDA), to which the smtp
daemon hands the mail for local delivery.
SiKing
So how about this:
All our servers (with the exception of corporate mail) are installed with no
mail service - there is a good (corporate) reason for this. :) Anyway, if I run
a crontab on an HP-UX I get the mail file, but the same situation on a Solaris
machine will _not_ produce the mail file. How do I find out what created the
mail file on the HP?
Thanx.
Patrick
SiKing <nos...@noway.invalid> wrote:
> All our servers (with the exception of corporate mail) are installed
> with no mail service - there is a good (corporate) reason for this.
> :) Anyway, if I run a crontab on an HP-UX I get the mail file, but
> the same situation on a Solaris machine will _not_ produce the mail
> file. How do I find out what created the mail file on the HP?
"man crond" is the first thing that comes to mind. Examing the relevant log
files is the second.
SiKing
man was no help in this (admittedly obscure) case, as I expected. As for the
logs, I don't know what is "relevant" in this case, other than /var/cron/log. I
also tried Google ...
Thanx for the help anyway, I'll work around it.