vixie
mailer used by cron
using debian, apparently, the mailer used by cron cannot be configured on debian, as a result, cron doesn't send mails.
I think cron uses the link /usr/sbin/sendmail ( ls -li -> 23829 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Jul 13 2021 sendmail -> exim4)
- I cannot change the link (other program will not work), I tried, renamed the existing link, than sudo ln -s /usr/bin/msmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail, cron works with this config, all other programs also work.
- I cannot change the exim4 config, mail from other programs doesn't arrive, if I reconfigure this for cron to work)
I found to pages on the web, one says the mailer is hard coded, another says the -m option can be used to change the mailer. Unfortunatelly, the -m option isn't available on debian ( invalid option -- 'm').
can this option be added OR is there another way to change the mailer (on debian)
links I found: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/change-cron-default-sendmail-to-mail.60400/ https://serverfault.com/questions/632250/what-mailer-does-cron-use-to-send-mail
thank you for your time and effort.
every system that imported cron immediately zigged or zagged in terms of modifying it to suit the tastes of the importing team and/or community. the upstream version just assumes that _PATH_SENDMAIL is defined and that it points to the system's "sendmail equivalent". i don't run sendmail but since postfix comes with a "sendmail" wrapper script i have no mail-related problems in cron. sounds to me like postfix isn't the default on debian, and that exim doesn't include a "sendmail" wrapper script.
a patch that implemented "-m" as described in the freebsd cron man page would be accepted. however, i do not know how to get debian to pay attention to such a change. i'd like debian and freebsd and the others to merge against the upstream, but those maintainers may not be motivated to do it. thanks for your report and i welcome further comments or questions.
