anacron: ignores -m command line parameter

[corvus1]

Not sure if intentional or not, but inconsistent. If you pass -m to the cron daemon, it's using alternative MTA command to mail the output of the cronjobs. Works fine with crond, and I think it's the standard for any crond implementation. Anacron, however, still calls /usr/sbin/sendmail.

Can it be corrected somehow?

[t8m]

Anacron does not have any way to change the mailer command. It would be a new feature.

[corvus1]

Can I humbly request it?

[t8m]

Can I humbly request it?

There is no active development of cronie going on right now. But I review and merge external contributions if there are any.

[corvus1]

Can I humbly request it?

There is no active development of cronie going on right now. But I review and merge external contributions if there are any.

So you're saying if I do it myself, there's a chance of getting a pull request merged?
I am... not great at C, but I might try...

[t8m]

So you're saying if I do it myself, there's a chance of getting a pull request merged?

Yes, I'd suggest first describing here the exact way how it would be configured before you start implementing.

[corvus1]

My first idea was to read a variable from anacrontab. It already has MAILTO and MAILFROM, I was thinking of adding something like MAILER. Or even just SENDMAIL. And stuffing it here:

cronie/anacron/global.h

Line 36 in 5578503

#define SENDMAIL "/usr/sbin/sendmail"

Somehow it already has a variable defined. Says it's user-configurable... Or is it configurable at build-time?

[t8m]

Says it's user-configurable... Or is it configurable at build-time?

Yeah, it is meant to be configurable by editing the global.h file. Which is of course build-time and not particularly friendly way.

[corvus1]

Huh, but, being a gentoo-user, might be fine for me. :-) But okay.

Then if we look here:

cronie/anacron/runjob.c

Lines 316 to 328 in 5578503

	/* Get the source email address if set, or current user otherwise */
	mailfrom = getenv("MAILFROM");
	if (mailfrom == NULL) {
	mailfrom = username();
	}
	else {
	if (expand_envvar(mailfrom, mailfrom_expanded, sizeof(mailfrom_expanded))) {
	mailfrom = mailfrom_expanded;
	}
	else {
	complain("The environment variable 'MAILFROM' could not be expanded. The non-expanded value will be used.");
	}
	}

We're reading variables from the environment. I'll read another one, SENDMAIL, in the same way as other 2. And if it's not defined in the environment, it'll be left as defined in global.h, right? Sounds pretty simple to implement. I might even be able to do it, without too much trouble. And then just to document it in the man page.

Does that sound sane? I'm asking all these questions, because I know how easy it is to make a horrible mess in C.

[t8m]

Does that sound sane? I'm asking all these questions, because I know how easy it is to make a horrible mess in C.

Yeah, that would be fine.

[corvus1]

Here's what I managed so far. #135

[corvus1]

@t8m Would you care to take a quick look at my draft?