Bug ID 564522: cron is configured with MAILTO=root but mailhost defaults to 'mail'

Last Modified: Sep 13, 2023

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP All(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
12.0.0, 12.0.0 HF1, 12.1.0 HF1, 12.0.0 HF2, 12.1.0 HF2, 12.0.0 HF3, 12.0.0 HF4, 12.1.1 HF1, 12.1.1 HF2, 12.1.2 HF1, 12.1.2 HF2, 12.1.0, 12.1.1

Fixed In:
13.0.0, 12.1.2

Opened: Dec 23, 2015

Severity: 4-Minor

Related Article: K40547220

Symptoms

The crontab and ssmtp configurations environment is MAILTO="", which means no email and it is difficult to find where the email went.

Impact

- You may receive unexpected messages addressed to "root" at a host named "mail" on your network OR - You may encounter messages similar to the following in /var/log/maillog: Dec 10 03:25:24 BIG-IP-1 err sSMTP[8421]: Unable to connect to "mail" port 25. Dec 10 03:25:24 BIG-IP-1 err sSMTP[8421]: Cannot open mail:25

Conditions

This exists in the default crontab and ssmtp configurations.

Workaround

Change outbound-smtp mailhub to localhost with tmsh: tmsh modify /sys outbound-smtp mailhub localhost

Fix Information

Default mailhub has been changed to localhost. Starting in 12.0.0, MAILTO is set to root instead of "" in /etc/crontab so that the output of cron jobs can be captured. However, ssmtp is configured by default with a mailhost of 'mail', which may result in either error messages logged to /var/log/maillog or unexpected messages received on another system.

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips