Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2002 10:01:52 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Steve Warwick <ukla@attbi.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cron: mailing owner: how to stopit! Message-ID: <20020720090152.GA12356@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <B95E0C32.32ED%ukla@attbi.com> References: <B95E0C32.32ED%ukla@attbi.com>
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On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 06:34:26PM -0700, Steve Warwick wrote:
> I have several scripts that run very frequently and email the owner
> every time the script is run.
> I have gone through all the setup / config files but cannot figure
> out how to stop this from happening. Anyone have a list of locations
> I should look for this configuration / option?
cron will mail back any output on stdout or sterr from your scripts.
If you don't want this e-mail then you have three choices:
i) Set the MAILTO= variable at the top of the crontab (See the
crontab(5) man page). This won't suppress the e-mail, just
redirect it somewhere else. Instead of choosing your least
favourite user as a sacrificial victim, sending the mail to
'nobody' will dispose of it humanely. Even better, setting
MAILTO="" will suppress e-mail output entirely. Unfortunately
that is rather a blunt instrument: you will be disposing of all of
the e-mail generated by every job in the crontab.
ii) Redirect the stdout and stderr of your command to a log file,
or to /dev/null. Append ' >/dev/null 2>&1' to the end of the
command line in the crontab to send all the output to oblivion, or
' >>/var/tmp/logfile 2>&1' to append it to a logfile.
iii) (and this is my preferred method) Rewrite your scripts, or
write a wrapper script around your commands so that they emit no
output for a normal, successfully completed run. On the other
hand, should there be a problem, make your script print out as
detailed a diagnostic error message as suits you. That way, you
only get e-mail when something goes horribly wrong.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Marlow
Fax: +44 0870 0522645 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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