Disable The Mail Alert By Crontab Command

by nixCraft on May 4, 2006 · 29 comments· LAST UPDATED June 22, 2009

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.

# Disable e-mail sending
MAILTO=""
* * * * * /bin/echo "Test email with MAILTO=\"\""
# Send e-mail to e-mail-1@domain.com
MAILTO="e-mail-1@domain.com"
* * * * * /bin/echo "Test email with MAILTO=\"e-mail-1@domain.com\""
# Send e-mail to e-mail-2@domain.com
MAILTO="e-mail-2@domain.com"
* * * * * /bin/echo "Test email with MAILTO=\"e-mail-2@domain.com\""
However, multi e-mail in MAILTO generate for me the "(CRON) error (bad mailto)" (in /var/log/syslog)
(Linux u-server-3-guest-2 2.6.38-10-virtual #46-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 28 17:54:41 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
)
# The following does not work, but should, if somebody know why
MAILTO="e-mail-1@domain.com, e-mail-2@domain.com"
* * * * * /bin/echo "Test email with MAILTO=\"e-mail-1@domain.com, e-mail-2@domain.com\""

Cheers,
Mickael

25 Varun Verma January 9, 2013 at 10:37 pm

Works like a charm. Thanks for sharing.

26 Rick March 20, 2013 at 9:48 pm

Hi,

I have another question for you. I want to set a cronjob which should be doing following:
checking a error file if generated every night in a specific directory and if there is one then sending to 5 users email id?

I think this should be done by creating a shell script and scheduling it every night.

Thanks a lot

27 Mickael March 21, 2013 at 4:09 am: Hi Rick,
I must say, it is not really a question about CRON, you are asking for writing a bash script?
Could you give your current scipt and if you have an issue with CRON notification, you could details your problem.
Cheers,
Mickael
Reply

28 Rick March 21, 2013 at 2:55 pm

@Michael

Thanks for replying here it is

#!/bin/sh
err_log_dir=”/apps/Load/DataLoad/DataLoadLogs”
logfile=”/apps/Load//DataLoad/DataLoadLogs/Mail_Log.log”

count=$(ls -1 ${err_log_dir}/*.err 2>/dev/null | wc -l)
if [ $count != 0 ]
then
echo “ERROR: There was an error in loading data” >> ${logfile}
MAILTO=”xysz.com” >> ${logfile}
else
echo “No Error file was created.” >> ${logfile}
exit
fi

29 Rick March 25, 2013 at 4:22 pm