[SOLVED] still get mail from cron job redirected to /dev/null?

dchmelik · 02-04-2024, 02:00 AM

I still get mail from this cron job. Is it because it's several commands and every one needs redirection, so maybe they're better done as a script?

Code:

MAILTO=""
0 7 * * * cd /usr/local/lib64 && tar cJvf eggdrop.tar.xz eggdrop && chown user:users eggdrop.tar.xz && mv eggdrop.tar.xz /home/user 1> /dev/null 2>&1

Thom1b · 02-04-2024, 02:48 AM

Hi,
You can create a script, or you can redirect every command. In your case, the tar command needs to be quiet with 1>/dev/null.

GazL · 02-04-2024, 04:49 AM

If you're throwing the output away there's really no point on having that -v on the tar.

You could format it as { cmd1 && cmd2 && cmd3 ; } >/dev/null 2>&1

Note: that final semi-colon is not optional when using { }.

That said, when it comes to cron, my outlook has been to always put anything more complex than a single command into a script file.

pan64 · 02-04-2024, 06:53 AM

just some comments:
if you suppress all the output you will never know what's happened, if there was any error or if it was executed at all.
As it was mentioned probably would be better to put it into a script.
Add some error handling and logging, write the report into a file - if you don't want to send mail.