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"(CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)" error in the syslog

rated 0 times [ 251] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 573728 / 2 Years ago, thu, august 25, 2022, 9:12:58

I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS an a number of servers.

I have not added any cron jobs or edited my crontab on those servers, however, at around the same time for each machine, I get a 75% CPU spike and the following info in my syslog at the time of the spike:

CRON[8380]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, discarding output)

I have mono-complete installed and am running a service stack webserver.

What is the best way for me to stop this from happening? I would like to be able to remove the CPU spike.

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tiowift

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3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago fenddy · Accepted Answer

Linux uses mail for sending notifications to the user. Most Linux distributions have a mail service including an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) installed. Ubuntu doesn't though.

You can install a mail service, postfix for example, to solve this problem.

sudo apt-get install postfix

Or you can ignore it. I don't think the inability of cron to send messages has anything to do with the CPU spike (that's linked to the underlying job that cron is running). It might be safest to install an MTA and then read through the messages (mutt is a good system mail reader).