Bug 468575 - MAILTO= in crontab causes bogus erroring when installing crontab
Summary: MAILTO= in crontab causes bogus erroring when installing crontab
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED UPSTREAM
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Classification: Red Hat
Component: vixie-cron
Version: 5.2
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Marcela Mašláňová
QA Contact: Brock Organ
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2008-10-26 07:22 UTC by David Cantrell
Modified: 2013-04-12 19:56 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-01-22 10:00:22 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description David Cantrell 2008-10-26 07:22:44 UTC
On RHEL 5.2, if I run 'crontab -e' and use this for my crontab file:

    MAILTO=

    # update rawhide trees daily at 6:00 AM HST
    0 6 * * * /home/released/sync

I get this error when crontab tries to install the new crontab file:

    [root@tenon released]# crontab -e
    crontab: installing new crontab
    "/tmp/crontab.XXXXIhC21M":1: bad minute
    errors in crontab file, can't install.
    Do you want to retry the same edit?

But I use this for the crontab file:

    MAILTO=""

    # update rawhide trees daily at 6:00 AM HST
    0 6 * * * /home/released/sync

crontab is happy.  I know the manpage says to either define MAILTO to something or use MAILTO="", but on other Unix systems (such as Solaris), you can set MAILTO= and it has the same effect.  I wouldn't consider this a huge bug, just a user experience issue.  This is the kind of thing that would likely end up on a Solaris admin's blog under something titled "why I hate RHEL..." because he spent a good portion of his day trying to figure out why crontab was choking.  Well, that's just a theory anyway.

Comment 1 Marcela Mašláňová 2010-01-22 10:00:22 UTC
All cronjobs are checked for invalid syntax and warning is printed into logs since cronie (replacement for vixie-cron). I suppose this could also fix your issue, because you have been warned ;-)


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.