Re: [gentoo-user] weird cron mail problem

[Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net>]

090105 Willie Wong wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 01:04:45PM -0500, Penguin Lover Philip Webb squawked:
> have you checked your outgoing mail logs
> to see if cron attempts to send mail when fetchmail is called? 

Thanks for the suggestion: the last few lines of  /var/log/syslog  are :

  Jan  5 17:10:01 localhost cron[4753]: (root) CMD (test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons )
  Jan  5 17:10:01 localhost cron[4754]: (purslow) CMD (/usr/bin/fetchmail)
  Jan  5 17:10:11 localhost sSMTP[4765]: Sent mail for root@ca.inter.net (221 smtp-relay1.uniserve.ca closing connection) uid=1000 username=purslow outbytes=1049
  Jan  5 17:15:01 localhost cron[4908]: (purslow) CMD (/usr/bin/fetchmail)
  Jan  5 17:15:09 localhost sSMTP[4909]: Sent mail for root@ca.inter.net (221 smtp-relay2.uniserve.ca closing connection) uid=1000 username=purslow outbytes=952

> Actually, what is your cron recipe anyway? 

 /var/log/spool/cron/crontabs/<userid>  is :

  # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - edit the master and reinstall.
  # (/tmp/crontab.XXXXwsshN7 installed on Sun Nov  4 23:46:22 2007)
  # (Cron version V5.0 -- $Id: crontab.c,v 1.12 2004/01/23 18:56:42 vixie Exp $)
  */5 * * * * /usr/bin/fetchmail

I considered trying 'fetchmail -s', but I'm not sure
how to add a flag in a cron file (perhaps by using a script).

> Also, have you updated either cron or fetchmail recently?

The problem originated 090104 c0520 ,
when I edited  ~/.fetchmailrc  to delete the reference to a logfile.
However, attempts to restore the STATVS QVO ANTE have failed:
I've restored the previous version of  .fetchmailrc  without success
& I've remerged Fetchmail, rebooted & then run  fetchmailconf ,
but the crazy mails continue to appear every  5 min  in my inbox.

-- 
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