Re: [gentoo-user] weird cron mail problem

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

090106 Willie Wong wrote:
> 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. 

 /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf  has the lines (the last refers to my ISP):

  ...
  # The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000
  # Make this empty to disable rewriting.
  root=postmaster
  ...
  # The full hostname
  hostname=ca.inter.net
  ...

It looks as if this combination causes it to send to root@ca.inter.net .
I can't find a man file for  ssmtp.conf , only for  ssmtp ,
tho' the latter says the former should exist,
so I can't check in any more detail just how the lines above work,
eg what "rewriting" refers to or how the hostname is used.

> And check /etc/crontab to see whether the MAILTO field is set properly
> to where you want the mail to be delivered.

  MAILTO=root

this is for system cron jobs, which are run by & for root.
 
> Also, I don't know which implementation of cron you are using,
> but if your crontab is under <userid>, ...

Yes, with mail that's necessary for security.

> ... then usually cron will demand notification e-mails sent to <userid>:
> Try 'ls -l /var/spool/cron/crontabs/' :
> is your user's crontab owned by root for some reason?

No :

  root:550 crontabs> ls -l
  -rw------- 1 purslow crontab 234 2007-11-04 23:46 purslow

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

That looks like the quick fix.

> Writing "fetchmail -s" instead shouldn't be a problem.
> Why do you think it needs a script? 

I didn't know if cron will ignore stuff after the space otherwise,
but obviously it does, if your line above works.

> I still think you MTA is misconfigured for local mail. 

Like you, I'ld like to understand the real cause of the problem:
Gentoo is for people like us ... (smile)

Rewriting  .fetchmailrc  using  fetchmailconf  thro'out didn't help,
so that's one set of possibilities ruled out
& I will try the suggestions above (thanks) next.
Your or others' further comments are very welcome.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca