Ubuntu – How to make cron email the @gmail account

crondebugmailpostfix

I have a couple of cron jobs that sometimes produce error output and would like to get a notification in my "real" email account, since I don't use my user's mailbox in my Ubuntu laptop, but cron (or is it postfix maybe) keeps trying to email the local root account.

I know I can add the MAILTO variable to the crontab:

ricardo@ricardo-laptop:~$ sudo crontab -l
MAILTO=redacted@gmail.com
# m h  dom mon dow   command
*/5 * * * * /home/ricardo/mrtg/cfg/run.sh

But it doesn't seem to pay any attention to it

I also tried adding my email to the /etc/aliases file and running newaliases

ricardo@ricardo-laptop:~$ cat /etc/aliases
# See man 5 aliases for format
postmaster:    root
root:          redacted@gmail.com
ricardo:       redacted@gmail.com

still, whenever cron wants to send an email it's still sending it to root@my.domain.com:

ricardo@ricardo-laptop:/var/log$ tail mail.log
Aug  3 16:25:01 ricardo-laptop postfix/pickup[2002]: D985B310: uid=0 from=<root>
Aug  3 16:25:01 ricardo-laptop postfix/cleanup[4117]: D985B310: message-id=<20100803192501.D985B310@ricardo-laptop>
Aug  3 16:25:01 ricardo-laptop postfix/qmgr[2003]: D985B310: from=<root@144-68-247-190.fibertel.com.ar>, size=762, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Aug  3 16:25:03 ricardo-laptop postfix/smtp[4120]: D985B310: to=<root@144-68-247-190.fibertel.com.ar>, orig_to=<root>, relay=smtp.gmail.com[74.125.157.109]:25, delay=1.5, delays=0.38/0.02/0.9/0.18, dsn=5.7.0, status=bounced (host smtp.gmail.com[74.125.157.109] said: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. d1sm12275173anc.19 (in reply to MAIL FROM command))

Any suggestions? I'm running Ubuntu 10.04, with everything up-to-date

Best Answer

It would appear that you have configured smtp.gmail.com as your smarthost for the mail server. You need to remove the smarthost configuration or edit it so that your server is at all capable of sending mail to the outside world.

The configuration you have now for the mail forward appears to be working, but is failing because smtp.gmail.com is rejecting the mail.

Update: For future reference, the problem was in /etc/mailname which listed a name that wasn't in the mydestinations list of postfix. This caused all mails to be considered foreign and the mail bypassed /etc/aliases processing.

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