daily /security run output via periodic - stopped

[Matthew Seaman]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 08:48:24AM -0400, Dave [Hawk-Systems] wrote:
> >we have 4 servers running, each sends daily and security run output email each
> >day around 3am.  Recently one of them stopped sending these messages.  In
> >looking at the periodic.conf and associated directories, I don't see any
> >problems or changes that I am aware of.  There are no enrties in cron for it,
> >but then again there aren't any entries in the functional servers either.
> >
> >Is it possible we have disabled something by accident which could stop this one
> >server from sending these messages?
> 
> double checked everything just after sending...
> 
> periodic.conf was missing. (doh!)

... but that's OK, as the periodic system will just run using the
default settings from /etc/defaults/periodic.conf -- note the
instructions in that file: /etc/periodic.conf should contain only
those entries you want to be different to the default values.

As for how the periodic scripts get run each night: they are run as
cron jobs, but out of the system crontab in /etc/crontab.  That's a
slightly different animal which lives in a parallel universe to the
normal per-user crontabs, which are stored in /var/cron/tabs and
generally accessed via crontab(1).

As for the missing mail, did you check the client mailqueue?

    # mailq -Ac

or look at the contents of /var/spool/clientmqueue.  If the messages
are held up there, you should investigate what happened to the
sendmail msp queue-runner process which the system will run by default
so long as 'sendmail_enable=YES' or 'sendmail_enable=NO' is in
/etc/rc.conf.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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