Problem

You want to receive an email upon cron job failure.

Solution

The example code can be wrapped around a normal cronjob, to send an email if the cron fails.

Example

Add to beginning:

bash -c '( msg=`

Add to the end:

2>&1 > /tmp/logfail.log`; if [ ! -z "$msg" ] ; then echo "$msg" |

/bin/mail -s "`/bin/uname -n`:$LOGNAME:`/bin/date`: YOUR MESSAGE" YOUR_MAIL_LIST; fi )'

Demo

# # # # # bash -c '( msg=`YOUR COMMAND 2>&1 > /dev/null`; if [ ! -z "$msg" ] ; then echo "$msg" |/bin/mail -s "`/bin/uname -n`:$LOGNAME:`/bin/date`: YOUR MESSAGE" YOUR_MAIL_LIST; fi )'

Example of generating an email upon cron failure

Another example

Reference

[tags]bash, cron email, Unix Coding School[/tags]

• Linux Man Pages – crontab command
• Linux Man Pages – bash command
• Linux Man Pages – mail command
• Linux Man Pages – uname command
• Linux Man Pages – date command