F20 Where's my system mail?

[Arthur Dent]

On Mon, 2014-04-14 at 09:10 -0400, Fred Smith wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 09:20:09AM +0100, Arthur Dent wrote:
> <snip>
> > The test example I gave yesterday is in fact based on a real-life case.
> > I have a job that runs hourly from cron. Occasionally this process fails
> > (for reasons I won't bore the list with) and leaves a lock-file in place
> > - a will then refuse to run again until someone (me) has cleaned up
> > after it. The only way I even know that this has happened is accuse I
> > have another little hourly cron job that checks for the presence of the
> > lock-file and reports only if it exists.
> > 
> > If I have to rely on the daily logwatch output it could conceivably be
> > up to 23 hours before I even know that the job is not working...
> 
> I've used, in the past, a mechanism where the program controls its own
> lock file, so it has control over what goes inside the file. (I dunno if
> your app is simlar, or if it uses some system services to manage lockfiles.)
> 
> When starting up:
> 1. see if the lockfile exists
> 1a. Exists: open it, read its contents, which should be the PID of the
>     program that created it. see if a process of that PID is still running. 
>     If so, silently exit. if the pid doesn't exist, delete the lock file
>     and go to step 2.
> 1b. if no lockfile, start normally.
> 2. normal start: create the lockfile, write your own PID into it.
> 3. program runs.
> 4. when program finishes, it removes the lockfile.
> 
> This lets the program determine, whenever it starts up, if it's a bogus lock
> file, or if it isn't. If it no longer refers to a running process, it can
> simply be deleted without causing any undue delays.

Thanks for that - I am going to look into fixing that at some point in
the future, but at the moment my workaround will suffice. It's not just
for that problem that I want to see cron output in email form. I have
lots of jobs run as my user (mark) and I want the email to to know when
they have completed etc.

I am tearing my hair out over this. I have read previous threads on the
subject, but most seem to relate to getting root mail. That works now
(thanks to Suvayu Ali) - putting:
# Person who should get root's mail
root:		mark
into /etc/aliases did the trick for root cron jobs.
But I still don't get cron output for user mark.

I have MAILTO=mark at the top of my crontab file.

According to /var/log/cron the job has run and has produced output:
Apr 14 13:58:02 Zaphod CROND[8001]: (mark) CMD (~/scripts/croncheck.sh)
Apr 14 13:58:02 Zaphod CROND[7999]: (mark) CMDOUT (Please Note: That file does not exist)

Nothing appears in /var/spool/mail/mark though.

The exim logs show no evidence of having been bothered by cron...
2014-04-14 12:44:05 1WZfIy-0001xD-Mb <= fail2ban at example.com U=root P=local S=1988
2014-04-14 12:44:06 1WZfIy-0001xD-Mb => mark <root at Zaphod> R=procmail T=procmail
2014-04-14 12:44:06 1WZfIy-0001xD-Mb Completed
2014-04-14 13:08:35 Start queue run: pid=7745
2014-04-14 13:08:35 End queue run: pid=7745
2014-04-14 14:08:35 Start queue run: pid=8149
2014-04-14 14:08:35 End queue run: pid=8149

Note that the entry at 12:44 was the output from fail2ban which is
mailed to root (and thence to Mark). I then get that email.

So where does the output from cron jobs for normal users go?