Automating

[Adam W.]

Guru's last question today I promise.

I am running a command line virus scanner. So I set a cronjob to run it every sunday at 4:30 PM and send the output to a file in my homdir as below:

#30 16 * * 0 /usr/local/bin/uvscan/uvscan >> /home/name/scanresults

My question is how would I have these scan results automatically sent to my outlook e-mail address? Would I just put it is the crontab after the >> /home/name/scanresults? something like :

mail -s 'Subject' somewhere@domain.com < /home/name/scanresults


or is there an easier/better way?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Any output (STDOUT or STDERR) that is not redirected (to a file) when executed in a 'cron'd task is sent to the user as mail.

Hence, you could setup a '.forward' file in your ${HOME} directory that contains the line:

somewhere@domain.com

The '.forward' should be owned by the user and readable only by the same.

Otherwise, the 'mail' syntax you showed would also work.

Regards!

...JRF...

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Adam:

By the way, as a 'sendmail' requirement you must (of course) have the 'DJ' macro ("smart relay") defined in your '/etc/mail/sendmail.cf' something like:

DSexchange.domain.com

Regards!

...JRF...

[Adam W.]

James,
Unfortunately, we cannot have .forward file on our systems (Government regulation) we are allowed .alias files though. I could, in theory set it up the same yes?

[Adam W.]

but I digress. James, just to confirm if I did :

#30 16 * * 0 /usr/local/bin/uvscan/uvscan >> /home/name/scanresults mail -s 'scanresults' me@mine.com

would it work?

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi (again) Adam:

> we are allowed .alias files though. I could, in theory set it up the same yes?

Yes, see the '/etc/mail/aliases' file. You might just as well 'cron' something like:

# 30 16 * * 0 /usr/local/bin/uvscan/uvscan|mailx -s "The Subject" somewhere@domain.com

...eliminating the temporary file.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Adam W.]

ah, ya know what I didn't even think about it. For some reason I was thinking I HAD to send it to a file first. But then again, that is why your a guru and I am not. James, thank you (yet again) with all of your help.

[Adam W.]

James, once again always a pleasure. Thanks for the help.

[Dennis Handly]

>JRF: /usr/local/bin/uvscan/uvscan | mailx -s "The Subject" ...

If you want to also send stderr you would need to do:
/usr/local/bin/uvscan/uvscan 2>&1 | mailx -s "The Subject" ...