Ubuntu – By default, what system messages get mailed to root

10.04emailredmineserver

I recently installed ssmtp on my server to enable e-mail notifications for a redmine install. While I was verifying everything was setup correctly I got an e-mail notification about a failed cron job. This turned out to be really helpful and I never would have noticed it had I not set this up.

It's been a few days since and I haven't received any other e-mails from the system. By default, what mail gets sent to root?

Best Answer

By default, cron will mail all output from cron jobs to the owner of the job, whether they fail or not. (Root is the owner of the system cron job, and is configured as the mail destination for non-root daemon cron jobs.) Most system cron jobs are carefully written not to produce output unless something is wrong.

Any other program can send mail to root, but not many will in a default Ubuntu install. Things I have seen include

in Debian, some programs will send mail when they are not properly configured, but I have not seen this recently in Ubuntu
mdraid sends mail when an array fails or is restored
apcupsd sends mail when the machine loses AC power
uptimed sends mail when you pass a milestone or record

If you're writing your own cron jobs you can set MAILTO to control where the output is sent. (See also man 5 crontab.)

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I can confirm it's in a default installation, see the /usr/share/base-passwd/passwd.master file provided by the base-passwd package.

According to the documentation from that package, it is used for backup accounts without requiring full root permissions (which is available at /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.txt.gz, /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.html and online):

backup

Presumably so backup/restore responsibilities can be locally delegated to someone without full root permissions?

HELP: Is that right? Amanda reportedly uses this, details?

Note the keyword locally, for remote backups you have to enable a login shell first. You are free to use it for your own purposes, but note the above guide lines. Do not grant sudo policies for example that would allow the backup user to escalate its privileges to root.

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A Quick Guide to Evolution Bug Hunting

Discover What Causes the Bug

Starting Evolution from your terminal with some special environment variables causes Evolution to display more information on what it is currently doing.

The following is a list of variables and what each one tells Evolution to do:

Mail
    CAMEL_DEBUG=all — for debugging email problems
    CAMEL_DEBUG=gpg — for debugging email problems with GPG encryption
Calendars
    CALDAV_DEBUG=all — for debugging problems with CalDav calendars
    WEBCAL_DEBUG=1 — for debugging problems with read-only Web calendars
    ALARMS_DEBUG=1 — for debugging problems with Calendar reminders/alarms
Address books
    WEBDAV_DEBUG=1 — for debugging problems with WEBDAV address books
    LDAP_DEBUG=1 — for LDAP addressbooks (but combined with running ${install_prefix}/libexec/e-addressbook-factory on a console instead of Evolution itself)
    GOOGLE_BACKEND_DEBUG=1 — for debugging problems with Google Contacts addressbooks (but combined with running ${install_prefix}/libexec/e-addressbook-factory on a console instead of Evolution itself)
Microsoft Exchange accounts
    Exchange MAPI account type
        MAPI_DEBUG=1 — used for basic debugging of Exchange MAPI support inside of the evolution-mapi package
        LIBMAPI_DEBUG=15 — also used for debugging Exchange MAPI support but way more powerful. Debugs the raw communication by passing the variable also to underlying libmapi and samba4 libraries
    Exchange EWS account type
        EWS_DEBUG=1 — used for debugging Exchange EWS support: Prints each request and response
        EWS_DEBUG=2 — Same as #1 plus all bodies
    Microsoft Exchange account type
        E2K_DEBUG=1 — used for debugging classical Exchange support: Print each request and response
        E2K_DEBUG=2 — Same as #1 plus all request and response headers
        E2K_DEBUG=3 — Same as #2 plus bodies (except text/html)
        E2K_DEBUG=4 — Same as #3 plus global catalog debug
        E2K_DEBUG=5 — Same as #4 plus text/html bodies too
Novell GroupWise accounts
    GROUPWISE_DEBUG=1 — used for debugging GroupWise support

It's easy to start Evolution with custom variables. One would simply run something like the following:

CAMEL_DEBUG=all evolution >& evo.log

About Evolution and Microsoft Exchange Server

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