Cron & Task Scheduling (Cron/Systemd Timers/At)

Don’t let your cron jobs mail you to death

🧩 The Challenge

You finally fixed that backup script that was failing, but now you have ten thousand unread messages in /var/spool/mail/root. Every time the script runs, it spits out a single character to stdout and cron tries to be helpful by mailing you the result.

💡 The Fix

Just tell cron to send that output straight to /dev/null by appending the right redirect symbols. It keeps your mail spool clean and stops your inbox from filling up with useless noise.

* * * * * /usr/local/bin/backup-script.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

⚙️ Why It Works

Redirecting both standard output and standard error to the null device ensures cron has nothing to capture or send. Without that 2>&1, you’ll still get an email every time there’s a minor error.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Use MAILTO=”” at the top of your crontab file to disable mail alerts for the entire file globally.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 10/22/2026