Getting an email from Cron Daemon each hour

[gdimarco]

Since yesterday I started getting this email each hour.

Any ideas on how to fix it?

OS: Fedora Core 4
Plesk 8

From: Cron Daemon [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 8:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Cron <root@localhost> run-parts /etc/cron.hourly

/etc/cron.hourly/sendmail:

sendmail: illegal option -- q
sendmail: usage: sendmail [ -t ] [ -fsender ] [ -Fname ] [ -bp ] [ -bs ] [ arg ... ]

 

[tuberb]

I am having the same issue. Is there a fix for this, or Is there anything wrong with disabling this script; i.e. - what is the sendmail -q command intended to do, how should the command be properly issued, and what are the consequences of it not working as intended?

Thanks,

Barry

 

[jspilon]

plesk uses qmail,not send mail you don't need that script...

 

[jamesyeeoc]

True, but the real question is: since this just started, did they recently do some update/upgrade which inserted that script into their crontab? If so, then what is the cause?

For any who are curious, Plesk does use Qmail, which provides a 'sendmail' wrapper so things like php scripts can still call the 'sendmail' program, but in reality is running Qmail. The -q option for sendmail would try and force the mail queue to attempt immediate delivery of queued messages.

I'm curious to see what update may be responsible for suddenly inserting a crontab entry...

 

[OutKa5t]

I would also like an explanation of this hourly mail.cron and a fix if its not needed.

Has anyone made any progress with this?

 

[Mateo1041]

Add me to the list. Can't figure this one out. Can I just disable the hourly cron task?

 

[owen]

Hi Folks,

I think that I may have the solution for this. My /etc/cron.hourly directory was empty and I was still getting this behaviour. It appears that there's a separate sendmail config file in /etc/sysconfig as described here http://www.centos.org/docs/2/rhl-rg-en-7.2/s1-boot-init-shutdown-sysconfig.html. I've set the QUEUE variable to be empty, so I think that should take care of this issue.

og

 

[amit290]

Anyone found another solution to this? I'm on Plesk 8.1.1, fedora os4. Still getting these emails every hour. Above solution has not worked.

 

[amit290]

Anyone got ideas?

Is it ok to remove this cron job? what does it do exactly?

 

[Mateo1041]

FYI, I ended up disabling and have been fine since.

 

[Slavko]

Solved

By default cron jobs sends a email to the user account executing the cronjob. If this is not needed put the following command At the end of the cron job line .

>/dev/null 2>&1

Look at (6. Disable Email):
http://www.adminschoice.com/docs/crontab.htm

 

[nwilcox]

may I ask how to disable it? Is this something that can be done in plesk?

 

[amit290]

I never found a way of disabling them, but when I moved from a Fedora 4 system to a CentOS they stopped. Dont know if that helps someone out there to figure out why its happening.

 

[Mahdii]

By default cron jobs sends a email to the user account executing the cronjob. If this is not needed put the following command At the end of the cron job line .

>/dev/null 2>&1

Look at (6. Disable Email):
http://www.adminschoice.com/docs/crontab.htm

This is the solution, not sure why you are still posting asking for help! Thanks Slavko!

FYI, if you don't know how to do this:

1. Download Putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html)
2. Connect via SSH to your server
3. Type: crontab -e
4. Add the command to dump the result instead of email it (1,16,31,46 * * * * /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/backupmng >/dev/null 2>&1)
5. Repeat for each line that doesn't need an email notification

Thanks again Slavko!


Cheers