Re: How does Cron send email?
On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 19:53 -0500, Grok Mogger wrote:
> Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > Grok Mogger wrote:
> >> I was hoping someone could help me understand how cron magically
> >> sends email. My ultimate goal is to configure cron to send real
> >> Internet email so instead of just getting mail on my unix accounts on
> >> my linux box (which I read via the 'mail' command) I can get email at
> >> my gmail account.
> > Basic answer comes from the manpage for cron:
> >
> > When executing commands, any output is mailed to the owner
> > of the
> > crontab (or to the user named in the MAILTO environment variable
> > in the
> > crontab, if such exists).
> > so... simple answer is define MAILTO in your crontab
> >
> > broader answer depends on what mail you want sent - you can always
> > include a sendmail command in whatever script you're running
> >
> > Miles
> >
> >
> >
>
> I have read the cron manpage. I understand what cron mails and
> under what conditions it mails it, what I don't understand is
> HOW it mails it. I know that cron just sends the output of
> whatever script it runs. I don't understand how it mails that
> output. I'd like to understand how it does that so that I can
> make it send email to a gmail account or a similar "real"
> Internet account.
>
> Are you telling me that if I set my MAILTO entry to something
> like 'Joe.Person@gmail.com', that's actually going to send
> legitimate Internet mail to Joe at his gmail account? I find
> that hard to believe.
I have all of my machines at home configured to send all
"administrative" mail to my server which is on the internet. There fore
they need to have a real e-mail address.
You know you have an MTA running on your machine...
Just a snippet from /etc/aliases
# /etc/aliases
mailer-daemon: postmaster
postmaster: root
nobody: root
hostmaster: root
usenet: root
news: root
webmaster: root
www: root
ftp: root
abuse: root
noc: root
security: root
root: greg@gregfolkert.net
That is just from my personal workstation.
I have my MTA (exim4, exim4-base, exim4-config, exim4-daemon-light)
configured to have zero local mail. Any mail being forwarded to a smart
mailer. Which would happen to be my machine. Though I could configure it
to use Comcast's crappy servers, which would then send it to my
gregfolkert.net MX record.
Hope this helps.
--
greg, greg@gregfolkert.net
Novell's Directory Services is a competitive product to Microsoft's
Active Directory in much the same way that the Saturn V is a competitive
product to those dinky little model rockets that kids light off down at
the playfield. -- Thane Walkup
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