[gentoo-user] Re: vixie-cron not sending mail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-09-05, Grant Edwards <grante@××××.com> wrote:
> I've set the MAILTO env variable in my crontab, but vixie-cron
> still isn't sending e-mails.  I've verfied that I'm able to
> send email with /usr/sbin/sendmail (both with and without -t).
>
> I re-emerged vixie-cron with the debug USE flag, but it didn't
> seem to produce any debug info that I can find anywhere.
>
> How do I convince vixie-cron to produce some debug output
> so that I can figure out why it's not sending e-mails?

I've narrowed it down a little.  I'm using msmtp as an MTA.  I
normally don't have a global /etc/msmtprc configuration file --
I have per-user ~/.msmtprc files.  I first assumed that cron
was sending mail as the owner of the cron file (that owner has
a working msmtp config file).  That appears not to be true.

Next, I tried setting up msmtp config files for users root and
cron.  Both those configurations work fine.  But, cron still
can't send mail.

If I set up a globally readable msmtp config file in /etc, then
cron can send mail.  That's not really acceptible, since here
is sensitive information in that config file, and I don't want
just any random user account to be able to send mail.

I'm rather baffled as to what user and home directory cron is
running with when it tries to send mail. It's neither the
crontab owner, nor root, nor cron.  I've been able to find very
little documentation on vixie-cron other than a superficial man
page.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Did YOU find a
                                  at               DIGITAL WATCH in YOUR box
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