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 r...@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 r...@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 r...@localhost is delivered to r...@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 -- Q: What's grey and proves the nondenumerability of the Reals? A: Cantor's Diagonal Elephant Sortir en Pantoufles: up 760 days, 15:25
