Re: [gentoo-user] weird cron mail problem

[Willie Wong <wwong@Princeton.EDU>]

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 05:28:41PM -0500, Penguin Lover Philip Webb squawked:
> 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

Okay, this suggests that either cron or your mailer is misconfigured.
From the logs, you are running ssmtp. Check the config files for it to
see why mail intended for root@localhost is delivered to
root@ca.inter.net. And check /etc/crontab to see whether the MAILTO
field is set properly to where you want the mail to be delivered. 

Also, I don't know which implementation of cron you are using, but if
your crontab is under <userid>, then usually cron will demand
notification e-mails sent to <userid>... unless, hum, do a 

  ls -l /var/spool/cron/crontabs/

Is your user's crontab owned by root for some reason?

> > 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).

for what it's worth, I have my fetchmail line as 
  /usr/bin/fetchmail > /dev/null
so I only get e-mails when fetchmail writes to stderr (so when there's
an error). 

Writing "fetchmail -s" instead of what you have really shouldn't be a
problem. Why do you think it needs 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.

Okay, running fetchmail -s (or redirecting fetchmail output to
/dev/null) will probably cure the problem of the deluge. But I still
think you MDA is misconfigured for local mail. 

W
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