F20 - Unintended consequences of no default MTA - How best to fix

[Suvayu Ali]

On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 01:29:46PM -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:
> 
> On Jan 2, 2014, at 12:55 PM, "Lars E. Pettersson" <lars at homer.se> wrote:
> 
> > On 01/02/2014 08:45 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> >>>> Is there something you expect to see that is missing from the journal?
> >>> 
> >>> Yes, the output of cron, that is not a part of the journal output.
> >> 
> >> Then cron is broken.
> > 
> > cron by default sends the output to root
> > 
> > $ head /etc/crontab
> > SHELL=/bin/bash
> > PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
> > MAILTO=root
> > 
> > From 'man cron':
> > 
> > "When executing commands, any output is mailed to the owner of the crontab (or to the  user  specified  in  the MAILTO  environment variable in the crontab, if such exists)."
> > 
> > It also states:
> > 
> > "Any job output can also be sent to syslog by using the -s option."
> > 
> > The problem with that option is that the output from cron can voluminous, and voluminous messages are better suited as mails.
> 
> It seems that cron could have log levels like most other processes do,
> with a sensible default, and send that to the journal - while tagging
> each message sent with a proper priority, so that it can be properly
> filtered with journalctl -p -u.
> 

Does systemd-journald have capability to notify a user?  If not, please
do not suggest sending output to the journal as a valid alternative.
Other than the contents of the message, system mail is also a form of
notification.  I have used system mail under many capacities very
successfully on a variety of systems to get a variety of notifications
very reliably.  I see logs/journal as a passive tool, system mail or
other forms of notifications are active tools.  System mail fills a very
unique need, where it can be active and yet be very verbose unlike other
notification systems.

Cheers,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.