> Now I'm interested in the emails cron sends. Currently in /etc/crontab > there is: > > SHELL=/bin/sh > PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/lib/news/bin
This in any case find your shutdown program. > MAILTO=root > # > # check scripts in cron.hourly, cron.daily, cron.weekly, and cron.monthly > # > -*/15 * * * * root test -x /usr/lib/cron/run-crons && > /usr/lib/cron/run-crons >/dev/null 2>&1 > > so mail is going to "root". How/where do I set up emails to go to some > external email address? Presumably more than changing MAILTO= is > required No. > - an smtp server needs to be specified somewhere? No. Cron (as all other programs with the exception of your GUI email clients) submits mail to your local MTA (mail transfer agent). It is then your MTA's job to deliver any mail to worldwide.net. That's the point of an MTA, and that's why it's a good idea to always configure it. Submission to your local MTA can be by methods: 1) Calling /usr/bin/sendmail (or whereever located, for any good MTAs compatible with decades old Unix practice), note this doesn't meaning running the sendmail MTA. This is most common. 2) Delivering to localhost:25 via SMTP. fetchmail does this by default. 3) Delivering to hostname:25 via SMTP, if the MTA is configured to listen on this external interface. Linux systems currently ship with MTAs running after boot, and configured to deliver mail at least on the local host. You need this because too many Unix system programs communicate with email. Whether by default systems ship with delivering mail only to localhost, or also to worldwide.net, is distro dependent. SUSE goes worldwide, Debian as far as I could see restricts to localhost (wish SUSE did too). Also note that at least some Linux systems (includes SUSE) can easily be configured to deliver mail sent to root to some other user instead. That is because root shouldn't be reading mail (security risk with mail clients), and the user reading root's mail should be the sysadmin (while *not* logged in as root). In some cases having any mail delivered to root is actually impossible, for example postfix refuses to run an MDA (mail delivery agent, procmail!) as root in default config. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
