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I have a script called cron-test.sh with a line of code to trigger an error:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Cron Tab is Running"
asdfadsf

My crontab -e has this:

* * * * * /home/user/cron-test.sh

I can't seem to get any emails of the error in my script, I know email configuration is set up properly because I tested the following in crontab -e and I get emails every minute telling me "Cron Tab is Running".

MAILTO="me@email.com"
* * * * * /home/user/cron-test.sh

How do I receive an email when an error occurs.

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  • Are you asking why your MAILTO environment variable needs to be set explicitly in the crontab, rather than being inherited from somewhere? – steeldriver Jun 20 '21 at 01:30
  • My understanding is that crontab by default will automatically email me when there's an error with the script it runs. When I have "asdfadsf" in my script, that throws an error. However, crontab is not emailing me that this script threw an error. – lightstream Jun 20 '21 at 02:02
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    Without a MAILTO variable, AFAIK it will attempt to mail to the crontab's owner locally, using something equivalent to user@localhost.localdomain. The mail should end up in /var/mail/user (although for that to work, you need a full mail server running on the localhost I think - rather than a mail forwarder such as ssmtp or the like). – steeldriver Jun 20 '21 at 10:39
  • Thank you @steeldriver – lightstream Jun 21 '21 at 12:40

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