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I've installed Apticron a few days ago, but I'm not getting any emails even though I've edited /etc/apticron/apticron.conf and changed EMAIL= MY@MAIL.COM.

Does anyone have any ideas? I got Mailx installed and working properly and I'm able to send mails using Mailx, but for some reason I can't get it done with Apticron.

Fern Moss
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user4085884
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2 Answers2

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I had similar problem. The solution:

Edit this file

nano /etc/cron.d/apticron

and replace this line

10 * * * * root if test -x /usr/sbin/apticron; then /usr/sbin/apticron --cron; else true; fi

to like this:

10 * * * * root if test -x /usr/sbin/apticron; then /usr/sbin/apticron; else true; fi

I'm not sure why, but it works without

--cron

parameter.

Feriman
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In my case it did not work due to greylisting by recipient MX server.

A mail transfer agent (MTA) using greylisting will "temporarily reject" any email from a sender it does not recognize. If the mail is legitimate, the originating server will try again after a delay, and if sufficient time has elapsed, the email will be accepted.

So it is better to test that outgoing mail reaches your notification address before expecting apticron to work.

I used mail command as described in this answer.

NOTE: it might be a good idea to use some test service like mail-tester.com first in a hope to not get your dedicated IP instantly flagged by real e-mail provider like Google or the one that serves your recipient. It is just a thought though, I have no idea if such test services actually work that way, but it would be a logical assumption.

By reading auto-reply from mail I saw that my e-mail was not delivered with a mention of

Sorry, the service is currently unavailable. Please come back later

If you simply remove --cron parameter apticron will execute every hour instead of once per day. Which probably results in bypassing greylisting protection but does not fix real issues. E.g. my test e-mails ended up in spam.

Leeroy
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