Though it seems the "by default.." sentence is wrong. (Maybe that's
why the paragrah was removed). HOwever the environment settings do
apply, and perhaps you will want to use
CONTENT_TYPE=text/plain; charset=ascii
CONTENT_TRANSFER_ENCODING=7bit
Ralph.
On Thu, Jan 08, 2026 at 07:55:07PM +1100, Ralph Ronnquist via Dng wrote:
> It appears that debian's "man 5 crontab" has lost some useful details,
> such that:
>
> "By default, cron sends a mail using the 'Content-Type:' header of
> 'text/plain' with the 'charset=' parameter set to the
> 'charmap/codeset' of the locale in which crond(8) is started up,
> i.e., either the default system locale, if no LC_* environment
> variables are set, or the locale specified by the LC_* environment
> variables (see locale(7)). Different character encodings can be
> used for mailing cron job outputs by setting the CONTENT_TYPE and
> CONTENT_TRANSFER_ENCODING variables in a crontab to the correct
> values of the mail headers of those names."
>
> (I'm afraid I don't have a say in that matter; Prtobably seen as
> improvement by some)
>
> Ralph.
>
> On Thu, Jan 08, 2026 at 09:12:26AM +0100, Rene Kita wrote:
> > On my newly setup Excalibur box I receive cron mails as
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable which makes reading them
> > with mail(1) unpleasant.
> >
> > Using mail(1) itself or just printf'ing to /usr/sbin/sendmail mails are
> > not send as quoted-printable.
> >
> > Here is an example bad mail:
> >
> > #v+
> > Message 1:
> > >From kt@??? Tue Jan 06 09:54:02 2026
> > Envelope-to: kt@???
> > Delivery-date: Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:54:02 +0100
> > From: root@??? (Cron Daemon)
> > To: kt@???
> > Subject: Cron <kt@x280> backup mobile: -Lahv
> > MIME-Version: 1.0
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> > X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/home/kt>
> > X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/home/kt/.local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin>
> > X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
> > X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=kt>
> > Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:54:02 +0100
> >
> > ssh: connect to host mobile port 22: Connection refused=0D
> > #v-
> >
> > How can I turn this off?
> >
> > #v+
> > root@x280:~# more /etc/default/cron
> > # Cron configuration options
> >
> > # Whether to read the system's default environment files (if present)
> > # If set to "yes", cron will set a proper mail charset from the
> > # locale information. If set to something other than 'yes', the default
> > # charset 'C' (canonical name: ANSI_X3.4-1968) will be used.
> > #
> > # This has no effect on tasks running under cron; their environment can
> > # only be changed via PAM or from within the crontab; see crontab(5).
> > READ_ENV="yes"
> >
> > # Extra options for cron, see cron(8)
> > #
> > # For example, to enable LSB name support in /etc/cron.d/, use
> > # EXTRA_OPTS='-l'
> > #
> > # Or, to log standard messages, plus jobs with exit status != 0:
> > # EXTRA_OPTS='-L 5'
> > #
> > # For quick reference, the currently available log levels are:
> > # 0 no logging (errors are logged regardless)
> > # 1 log start of jobs
> > # 2 log end of jobs
> > # 4 log jobs with exit status != 0
> > # 8 log the process identifier of child process (in all logs)
> > #
> > EXTRA_OPTS=""
> >
> > root@x280:~# more /etc/default/locale
> > # File generated by update-locale
> > LANG="C.UTF-8"
> >
> > t@x280:~# more /etc/environment
> > root@x280:~#
> > #v-
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Dng@???
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::
Re: [DNG] quoted-printable emails f…
