I have the following line in my /etc/cron.d/apache2watch file
* * * * * root /bin/apache2-restart.sh &> /dev/null
I am currently receiving hundreds of mails to root because of this. I don't know why root is still receiving mail every second or so telling me that the cron job was run - even though I have clearly redirected outputs to /dev/null
Can anyone explain why root continues to receive mail, and how I can change this behaviour?
I am running on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
You are still receiving emails probably because you have only redirected standard output to /dev/null. Your shell script probably writes to stderr too, so correct redirection would be like:
* * * * * root /bin/apache2-restart.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
&> is supposed to redirect both stdout and stderr. It still might be the case that this syntax is not supported by the OP’s shell; if (and only if) so, your answer is valid. I’ll correct the answer accordingly.
Feb 6, 2019 at 13:02
Insert MAILTO="" before you crontab line.
/tmp is.
Feb 6, 2019 at 13:06
why don't you set MAILTO="" in particular user's here 'root' crontab. This will disable logging of mail messages in /var/spool/mail/
You have redirected outputs to /dev/null, but only if you're using bash as your crontab shell. I believe that by default you'd be using /bin/sh.
To fix it, I'd recommend thor's solution:
* * * * * root /bin/apache2-restart.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
The other solution is to change CRON to use bash by putting this at the beginning of your crontab entry:
SHELL=/bin/bash
