RHEL 4 Sendmail sending email every second from CRON, how to stop
 

Hi All,
I have a RHEL 4 box that is emailing the user root an email every second that claims it's coming from the CRON.

I went to check the all cron jobs and crontabs, I found the job under /etc/crontab

Someone had set obviously for every 30 seconds to run the ntpdate command in the past and I am not sure why but now a massive backlog of emails has come smashing through ever since I started sendmail.


30 * * * * root ntpdate ntp01.example.com


When I do a : watch -n 0.5 ls /var/spool/mqueue


I see the emails coming through:

So I commented out the entry under /etc/crontab and changed the MAILTO variable:

MAILTO=""
#30 * * * * root ntpdate ntp01.example.com

I then did a service crond restart && service sendmail restart and the emails are still coming through like crazy.


I did a search for a .vaaction file and a .mail files and could not find anything....

Does anyone have any idea, how to stop this badboy?

Thanks















Thanks

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:30:01 +1100
From: root@server01.example.com (Cron Daemon)
To: root@server01.example.com
Subject: Cron <root@server01> ntpdate ntp01.example.com
X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/bash>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <MAILTO=root>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=root>
X-Cron-Env: <USER=root>

27 Mar 23:30:01 ntpdate[27944]: adjust time server 10.10.10.1 offset -0.157916 sec

Looks like there is an "X-Cron" variables I need to hunt for will dig a little deeper.....

/var/spool/clientmqueue : cleared this folder that only has 9 small emails and things are looking better, it's all stopped for now.