sending mail with the mail command from a crontab..

[NetNut404]

Hi, I have tested this on several machines, and I can't tell why it is not working.

if I go to a bash shell, and run:

mail -s "Test email" email@domainname.com </tmp/messagebody

the email will send just fine..

but If I put that line in the crontab of any user.. it does not send an email.

I thought.. maybe there is a problem with the redirection.. so I put it in a bash script.. the script works fine from the prompt, but when I put it in cron... no email..

so I am a little annoyed at this point.. because I used to do this all the time.. and now it no longer works...

I am currently running fedora core 5 on this machine with all the updates.. so I started wondering when this stopped working.. I get the same results on several fedora core 5, 4, and 3 machines. I did not have a fedora core 2 machine handy to test.. but I found a fedora core 1 machine, and it worked fine just like I remember..

Any hints you can give me as to what is going on, and how I can fix it?

[bytesniper]

I ran into a very similar issue writing a backup script at one point. What I did is instead of using a < I used an echo with a pipe.

something similar to this:

echo "messge for the body of the email" | /bin/mail -s"email subject" email_recipient@domain.tld

hth,
joseph

[ccrvic]

Originally Posted by NetNut404

mail -s "Test email" email@domainname.com </tmp/messagebody

the email will send just fine..

but If I put that line in the crontab of any user.. it does not send an email.

cron executes without an environment, so you have no PATH.

That means "mail" can't be found.

Give it a complete pathspec, and all will bound into life...

Vic.

[NetNut404]

Originally Posted by ccrvic

cron executes without an environment, so you have no PATH.

That means "mail" can't be found.

Give it a complete pathspec, and all will bound into life...

Vic.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that did not help, even with the absolute path it makes no difference, also if I put in a bad command in the cron it would cause a mail to be generated by cron.

(I also tried seting the path in a script that is called from cron.. made no difference either.

[NetNut404]

Originally Posted by bytesniper

I ran into a very similar issue writing a backup script at one point. What I did is instead of using a < I used an echo with a pipe.

something similar to this:

echo "messge for the body of the email" | /bin/mail -s"email subject" email_recipient@domain.tld

hth,
joseph

My friend suggested that as well, which I tried, and got the same result.. and of course it works perfecly when run on the command line.

[GrayFox]

I have the following in one of the cron.daily files....

#!/bin/sh
/bin/mail -s "Daily Cron" jerry <<DOC
The daily cron job ran at `date`
DOC

sends me mail every time cron runs the daily tasks.

Jerry

[NetNut404]

Originally Posted by GrayFox

I have the following in one of the cron.daily files....

#!/bin/sh
/bin/mail -s "Daily Cron" jerry <<DOC
The daily cron job ran at `date`
DOC

sends me mail every time cron runs the daily tasks.

Jerry

Thanks, I will try it as a test.. although what I was doing was in a users crontab file (a little bit different )

[NetNut404]

Originally Posted by GrayFox
I have the following in one of the cron.daily files....

#!/bin/sh
/bin/mail -s "Daily Cron" jerry <<DOC
The daily cron job ran at `date`
DOC

sends me mail every time cron runs the daily tasks.

Jerry



Thanks, I will try it as a test.. although what I was doing was in a users crontab file (a little bit different )

Originally Posted by NetNut404

Thanks, I will try it as a test.. although what I was doing was in a users crontab file (a little bit different )

Ok, I tried that.. (used .hourly instead) and that function still works.. but the users crontab is where the problem occurs