Databases, Systems & Networks

Source: nixCraft

How do I to disable the mail alert send by crontab? When my job is executed and the jobs cannot run normally it will sent an email to root. Why do I receive e-mails to my root account from cron? How can I prevent this? How can I disable email alert sent by cron jobs on a Linux or Unix-like systems?

The crontab command is used to maintain crontab files for individual users. By default the output of a command or a script (if any produced), will be email to your local email account. To stop receiving email output from crontab you need to append following strings at the end of crontab entry.

Cron job prevent the sending of errors and output

To prevent the sending of errors and output, add any one of the following at the end of the line for each cron job to redirect output to a.

/dev/null 2>&1.

OR

&> /dev/null

Cron job example

Edit/Open your cron jobs, enter:

$ crontab -e

Append string >/dev/null 2>&1 to stop mail alert:

0 1 5 10 * /path/to/script.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

OR

0 1 5 10 * /path/to/script.sh &> /dev/null

Save and close the file.

Set MAILTO variable

You can set MAILTO="" variable at the start of your crontab file. This will also disable email alert. Edit/Open your cron jobs:

$ crontab -e

At the top of the file, enter:

MAILTO=""

Save and close the file.

source: Devshed

Crontabs is very useful when doing website maintenance. You can use this feature for the following purposes:

1. Deleting all files in a certain folder at regular intervals. If you accept user-uploaded files, then eventually it will clog your web hosting server. If you do not regularly delete these files, they will consume a lot of disk space and can slow down your website.
2. Deleting files of a specific type at regular intervals. You can also choose to delete files of a specific type, instead of deleting all of the files in the folder. If you have PHP, HTML and MP3 files together inside the folder, you can delete only the MP3 files.
3. Regularly backing up your MySQL database. This is one of the most important webmaster tasks. By using crontabs or the cron job feature, you can create a PHP script that will back up a selected MySQL database, and have it execute automatically executed at a specific, regular interval (e.g monthly, yearly, etc).

This tutorial will focus on creating a cron PHP script application, then configuring your cron hosting feature to execute these scripts automatically. Lire la suite…

I ended up writing a script (I’m trying to teach myself the finer points of bash scripting, so that’s why you don’t see something like Perl here). It’s not exactly a simple affair, but it does most of what I need. It uses Kyle’s suggestion for looking up individual users’ crontabs, but also deals with /etc/crontab(including the scripts launched by run-parts in /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily, etc.) and the jobs in the /etc/cron.d directory.source: How do I list all cron jobs for all users?

I ended up writing a script (I’m trying to teach myself the finer points of bash scripting, so that’s why you don’t see something like Perl here). It’s not exactly a simple affair, but it does most of what I need. It uses Kyle’s suggestion for looking up individual users’ crontabs, but also deals with /etc/crontab(including the scripts launched by run-parts in /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily, etc.) and the jobs in the /etc/cron.d directory.

It takes all of those and merges them into a display something like the following:

#!/bin/bash
# System-wide crontab file and cron job directory. Change these for your system.
 CRONTAB='/etc/crontab'
 CRONDIR='/etc/cron.d'
# Single tab character. Annoyingly necessary.
 tab=$(echo -en "\t")
# Given a stream of crontab lines, exclude non-cron job lines, replace
 # whitespace characters with a single space, and remove any spaces from the
 # beginning of each line.
 function clean_cron_lines() {
 while read line ; do
 echo "${line}" |
 egrep --invert-match '^($|\s*#|\s*[[:alnum:]_]+=)' |
 sed --regexp-extended "s/\s+/ /g" |
 sed --regexp-extended "s/^ //"
 done;
 }
# Given a stream of cleaned crontab lines, echo any that don't include the
 # run-parts command, and for those that do, show each job file in the run-parts
 # directory as if it were scheduled explicitly.
 function lookup_run_parts() {
 while read line ; do
 match=$(echo "${line}" | egrep -o 'run-parts (-{1,2}\S+ )*\S+')
if [[ -z "${match}" ]] ; then
 echo "${line}"
 else
 cron_fields=$(echo "${line}" | cut -f1-6 -d' ')
 cron_job_dir=$(echo "${match}" | awk '{print $NF}')
if [[ -d "${cron_job_dir}" ]] ; then
 for cron_job_file in "${cron_job_dir}"/* ; do # */
 [[ -f "${cron_job_file}" ]] && echo "${cron_fields} ${cron_job_file}"
 done
 fi
 fi
 done;
 }
# Temporary file for crontab lines.
 temp=$(mktemp) || exit 1
# Add all of the jobs from the system-wide crontab file.
 cat "${CRONTAB}" | clean_cron_lines | lookup_run_parts >"${temp}"
# Add all of the jobs from the system-wide cron directory.
 cat "${CRONDIR}"/* | clean_cron_lines >>"${temp}" # */
# Add each user's crontab (if it exists). Insert the user's name between the
 # five time fields and the command.
 while read user ; do
 crontab -l -u "${user}" 2>/dev/null |
 clean_cron_lines |
 sed --regexp-extended "s/^((\S+ +){5})(.+)$/\1${user} \3/" >>"${temp}"
done <
# Output the collected crontab lines. Replace the single spaces between the
 # fields with tab characters, sort the lines by hour and minute, insert the
 # header line, and format the results as a table.
 cat "${temp}" |
 sed --regexp-extended "s/^(\S+) +(\S+) +(\S+) +(\S+) +(\S+) +(\S+) +(.*)$/\1\t\2\t\3\t\4\t\5\t\6\t\7/" |
 sort --numeric-sort --field-separator="${tab}" --key=2,1 |
 sed "1i\mi\th\td\tm\tw\tuser\tcommand" |
 column -s"${tab}" -t
rm --force "${temp}"

source: How do I list all cron jobs for all users?

Most hardcore command line users and unix geeks love vi, but I prefer nano. If you want to change your default crontab editor to nano, here’s how to do this:

For a one time edit, launch the terminal and type:

EDITOR=nano crontab -e

If you want to set nano as your default editor in general, you use this command:

export EDITOR=nano

Now when you go to edit crontab, nano will be the default editor than vi. You can test this by typing:

crontab -e

Looking beyond Mac OS X, this should work in Linux as well.