On 4/16/25 13:12, Walter Dnes wrote:
> I have my main desktop "dev2", and a newer "hot backup" machine named
> "dev3". A "singing, dancing" cron job runs daily at 03:30 local time.
> root's crontab is...
>
> 30 03 * * * /root/bin/bkup
>
> The script "/root/bin/bkup"...
> * uses "wakeonlan" to fire up my "hot backup" machine
> * waits 30 seconds for it to boot up (NVME is nice!)
> * rsync my $HOME directory, and a VM image in another directory, to
> the "hot backup" (exclude .ssh directory and some other stuff)
> * ssh root@dev3 /sbin/poweroff
>
> The script works, but the cron job email output has problems. My ISP
> is "EBOX" https://www.ebox.ca/en/ontario/residential/ My email to this list
> ccomes from "mutt" MUA which is set to use a 3rd-party service
> (cotse.net). Cron jobs come from <wherever?> and default to using ssmtp
> on my machine, which is configured to use EBOX mail server as follows...
>
> #
> # The person who gets all mail for userids < 10
> root=walterdnes
> # The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required
> # no MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com
> # The example will fit if you are in domain.com and you mailhub is so named.
> mailhub=smtp.ebox.net
> # Where will the mail seem to come from?
> #rewriteDomain=waltdnes.org
> # The full hostname
> hostname=waltdnes.org
> FromLineOverride=YES
>
> This seems like a "Rube Goldberg contraption" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine where... * the
> cron job sends an email to my ISP's smtp server * which sends it to my
> inbound personal domain email host cotse.net * which I poll manually
> occasionally Is this *REALLY* necessary? Can I turn off cron job
> emails alltogether? The failure seems to happen when the EBOX server
> submits the cron job email to cotse.net. Which one of them is "out of spec"? Here is the
> relavent part of the diagnostics...
>
> ===========================================================================
> This is the Email Security Gateway at host barracuda.ebox.ca.
>
> I'm sorry to inform you that the message below could not be delivered.
> When delivery was attempted, the following error was returned.
>
>
> <walterdnes@???>: host mail.cotse.net[173.166.91.11] said: 421 4.5.0
> Bare carriage return (CR) not allowed (in reply to end of DATA command)
> ===========================================================================
>
> Can I turn off cron job emails alltogether?
It is my understanding that this can be accomplished in the following ways.
1) set |MAILTO="" at the beginning of your crontab|
|2) redirect output of cron command with >/dev/null 2>&1 as cron only
sends output if there is any|
|OR|
|if you are willing to spend time and have patience, some MTAs have
destination based filtering|
|so that a local piece of mail would not have to leave the lan
|
|
|
|Hope this helps.|
|Ken
|
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Re: [DNG] Problem with cron-job ema…
