Disable The Mail Alert By Crontab Command

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?

crontab command is use 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 string:

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 /dev/null.
>/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. Restart the crond:
# /etc/init.d/crond restart

MAILTO variable

As pointed out by Anand Sharma, you can set MAILTO="" variable at the start of your crontab file. This will also disable email. Edit/Open your cron jobs
$ crontab -e
At the top of the file, enter:
MAILTO=""
Save and close the file.

See also:

• How do I add jobs to cron under Linux or UNIX oses?

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