Debug cron job - how to get results emailed?

Question

I am trying to debug why my the support ticket system I am setting up is not pulling the POP email from my Google Apps email.

I set up a cron job for this, per the instructions of the developer of the support ticket system:

php -q /home/username/public_html/support_ticket_sw/pipe/pop.php >/dev/null 2>&1

Then, based on some other thread on this site, I did this...

php -q /home/username/public_html/support_ticket_sw/pipe/pop.php >/dev/null 2>&1 | mail -s "cron output" [email protected]

...Now I get emails but they are empty. Do I need to put something relevant in stead of "cron output". I assumed that is the email subject line but maybe thre should go the output of the cron job? I don't know what that is...

Solution

Just remove the ">/dev/null 2>&1", and anything the command outputs will be emailed.

Cron normally emails the output of commands, if the commands output anything, unless you include redirection operators, which is exactly what "2>&1" and ">/dev/null" are.

Comments

[Strategerizer]

Thanks, that clarified that aspect. I am now getting the error message: Error Occurred: Can't connect to gmail-pop.l.google.com,995: Connection timed out.

[Gilles 'SO- stop being evil']

And if you want the mails sent to some external address rather than your local mailbox, put [email protected] at the beginning of the crontab.

[Tony Maro]

Actually Gilles is incorrect - the line should read: [email protected]