cron doesn't send mail

[narnie]

Binary package hint: cron

I have this as a test script called test_cron
_______________
#! /bin/bash
#

#if ! type promptYesNo > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then . /home/woodnt/scripts/misc.sh ; fi

FILE=/tmp/cron.log
TIME=`date -d now "+%m-%d-%y@%H%M%S"`
if [ ! -f $FILE ] ; then
 touch $FILE
fi

echo "Hello at $TIME from test_cron" |tee -a $FILE
_______________

From the last line, one can see that that there is output.

It is trying to send mail as can be seen here:
_______________
root 29138 0.0 0.0 18708 988 ? Ss 23:00 0:00 cron
root 29166 0.0 0.0 91236 2192 ? S 23:01 0:00 \_ CRON
root 29167 0.0 0.0 91244 1300 ? S 23:01 0:00 | \_ CRON
woodnt 29168 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Zs 23:01 0:00 | \_ [sh] <defunct>
woodnt 29193 0.0 0.0 37000 2100 ? S 23:01 0:00 | \_ /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -FCronDaemon -oem woodnt
woodnt 29194 0.0 0.0 36988 2096 ? S 23:01 0:00 | \_ /usr/sbin/postdrop -r
_______________

$ mail
No mail for woodnt
woodnt@toshiba-laptop /var/mail $

I have looked in /var/mail and it shows bupkis

woodnt@toshiba-laptop /var/mail $ sudo cat *
[sudo] password for woodnt:
woodnt@toshiba-laptop /var/mail $

checking out /var/log/mail.log shows nothing being sent from cron. mail.err is empty. No evidence of cron sending anything in mail.info either.

This works:

woodnt@toshiba-laptop /var/log $ echo hello|/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -FCronDaemon -oem woodnt
woodnt@toshiba-laptop /var/log $ mail
Mail version 8.1.2 01/15/2001. Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/woodnt": 1 message 1 new
>N 1 woodnt@toshiba-la Wed Feb 10 23:10 13/437
&

So somewhere between cron sending the mail and it going through postfix something is going wrong.

I have bsd-mailx installed which of course also installs postfix as a depends.

I can't duplicate this problem on other systems.

Of note, I had installed ssmtp first for another reason, but uninstalled thinking it might have been the problem. A purge uninstall then reinstall of bsd-mailx didn't fix this. I am not sure if the culprit is ssmtp configuring something and not undoing it on purge or if the fault is in cron.

Thanks,
Narnie

[narnie (signupnarnie)]

sorry. Forgot to show my crontab

woodnt@toshiba-laptop /var/log $ crontab -l

MAILTO="woodnt"
#m h dom mon dow command
*/1 * * * * /home/woodnt/bin/test_cron

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Since cron is clearly invoking sendmail and that invokes postfix, I'm guessing it goes missing inside postfix somewhere

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Please attach the output of postconf -n to the bug.

[narnie (signupnarnie)]

Sorry it took so long for this. Revisiting this issue after a fresh install of UNE 10.04

Here is the output of postconf -n
________________________________________________________________

alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases
alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
append_dot_mydomain = no
biff = no
config_directory = /etc/postfix
default_transport = error
inet_interfaces = loopback-only
mailbox_size_limit = 0
mydestination = localhost, localhost.localdomain, localhost
myhostname = localhost
mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128
readme_directory = no
recipient_delimiter = +
relay_transport = error
relayhost =
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache
smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu)
smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
smtpd_use_tls = yes

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Look in /var/log/mail.log for evidence of postfix trying to send the mail.

[narnie (signupnarnie)]

I have found the problem. It is caused by ecryptfs the way it is implemented in Ubuntu. Here is the culprit (found by hours of removing files and directories and rebooting):

I don't like my Private folder automounted. My solution, follow the recommendations to delete .ecryptfs/auto-mount.

When this is done, ecrypt tries to automount, but throws an error:

Aug 31 02:43:01 localhost CRON[8404]: Skipping automatic eCryptfs mount

followed by this error:

Aug 31 02:43:01 localhost CRON[8405]: (woodnt) CMD (echo "hello `date`")

Now I feel stupid for spending hours at this when I should have just done a simple mv .ecryptfs .ecryptfs.bak first, instead of for every dir (after I found every .xxx regular file had nothing to do with it).

I then also get the above cron process tree found by ps -auxf.

When I isolated .ecrpytfs, then I noted I had deleted the auto-mount and touched it to put it back. Rebooted, and I get mail and I get NO defunct sh and get no build up of cron processes.

This is a significant but, but not critical and likely affects very few people, but is hard to figure out when it does!

Not sure how to move this thread over to ecryptfs-utils.

Please advise,
Narnie

PS, it seems postfix is trying to send, but gets stuck (as noted above with the \_ /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -FCronDaemon -oem woodnt getting stuck, kind like it is waiting on stdin but who knows).

[narnie (signupnarnie)]

Here is the /var/log/mail.log if needed