[Techtalk] Dillon's Cron No Longer Sends Email?

[Marilyn Wulfekuhler]

Hi everyone,

I sent my email concurrently at the same time as Kai's.  The problems 
seem similar (but maybe are not).  And the one thing *I* didn't mention 
is that our app is started from cron (a user level cron).  It's hard to 
see why this would be important (since my missing mail comes from the 
user running the app, not cron), but I thought I would mention it.

Also, nothing in the mail server logs (the server isn't ever receving 
it, though it did receive my 30,000 test messags)

Marilyn

On 7-Dec-07, at 3:09 PM, Kai MacTane wrote:

> Hi, Chix--
>
> I'm running a Slackware 10.2 install, including Dillon's cron v2.3.3.
> There is no system standard /etc/crontab; instead, root has his (my) 
> own
> crontab, which has the usual:
>
>     5 0 1 * *        run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
>     1 0 * * *        run-parts /etc/cron.daily
>     0 * * * *        run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
>     */15 * * * *     run-parts /etc/cron.quad.hourly
>     */5 * * * *      run-parts /etc/cron.5minutely
>     * * * * *        run-parts /etc/cron.minutely
>
> in it, as well as this other line:
>
>     3 0 * * *        /usr/local/sbin/backup
>
> I recently (roughly a couple of weeks ago) switched my mail server from
> Qmail to Postfix.
>
> Until a couple of nights ago, all was well. The various scripts run by
> cron were mostly set to emit output on STDOUT if anything went wrong;
> such output would be picked up by crond and emailed to me. One of the
> cron.daily scripts is written to *always* produce output, thus mailing
> me various statistics.
>
> A few nights ago, I stopped getting such mails. I've now set one of the
> minutely scripts to always produce a line of output, just for debugging
> purposes. I have not been buried in a flurry of minutely emails.
>
> But crond is still running, doing everything just like it should. For
> example:
>
> root at finrod:~# tail /var/log/cron
> Dec  7 11:57:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25211 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
> Dec  7 11:58:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25455 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
> Dec  7 11:59:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25704 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
> Dec  7 12:00:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25941 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.hourly
> Dec  7 12:00:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25942 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.quad.hourly
> Dec  7 12:00:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25943 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.5minutely
> Dec  7 12:00:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 25944 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
> Dec  7 12:01:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 26492 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
> Dec  7 12:02:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 26736 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
> Dec  7 12:03:01 finrod crond[16185]: USER root pid 26973 cmd run-parts
> /etc/cron.minutely
>
> Also, files that are supposed to be created and updated by cron scripts
> are getting created and updated as they should.
>
> I've already posted all non-comment lines from my crontab, but here's
> the whole thing, just for completeness:
>
>
> # Run the 'atrun' program every 5 minutes
> # This runs anything that's due to run from 'at'. See man 'at' or 
> 'atrun'.
> # Note that this is commented out since it's not needed if you run atd.
>   But,
> # it's left as an example, since atd isn't strictly required.  You can 
> still
> # run it this way instead.
> #0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * *  /usr/sbin/atrun 1> 
> /dev/null
> 2> /dev/null
> #
> # This touches a filename in the temp directory so that you can see 
> cron is
> # working if the timestamp is current. Comment it out if it bugs you. 
> :^)
> # * * * * *       touch /tmp/.crond_running
>
> 5 0 1 * *        run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
> 1 0 * * *        run-parts /etc/cron.daily
> 0 * * * *        run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
> */15 * * * *     run-parts /etc/cron.quad.hourly
> */5 * * * *      run-parts /etc/cron.5minutely
> * * * * *        run-parts /etc/cron.minutely
>
> 3 0 * * *        /usr/local/sbin/backup
>
>
> (Some lines in there may have gotten wrapped by my mail program, but I
> can verify that they are *not* incorrectly wrapped in vi.)
>
> I've also verified that the emails aren't getting spam-filtered.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening, and how I can get 
> them
> turned on again? Thanks in advance!
>
>                                                  --Kai MacTane
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> "She's gonna dream up the world she wants to live in,
>   She's gonna dream out loud.
>   Dream out loud."
>                                                  --U2,
>                                                   "Zooropa"
>
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