My experiences with Mutt to date: Suggestions for overcoming some issues

[boB Stepp]

On 21/02/13 08:11AM, Cameron Simpson wrote:
>On 08Feb2021 14:43, boB Stepp <robertvstepp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>So I changed the command to:
>>
>>mbsync -a -qq
>>
>>and everything has been working.  I was curious as to what would happen at
>>3 AM when my router would reboot.  I got:
>>
>>Feb  8 03:00:01 Dream-Machine1 CRON[614314]: (bob) CMD (mbsync -a -qq )
>>Feb  8 03:00:24 Dream-Machine1 CRON[614312]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed,
>>discarding output)
>>
>>Hmm.  The same "No MTA installed, discarding output" as with the originally
>>worded command.  More information, but I still do not see why this message
>>is generated.
>
>I would guess your PC does not have a mail system installed. So cron
>cannot deliver the cron job output by email.

I was aware that a cron job could email its output, but I thought I would have
to explicitly set that up.  Is this not the case?  In any event I do not know
enough at this time to do this, so I haven't done so.  But if your hypothesis
is correct and it is trying to email me, but finding no MTA to enable it to do
so, why don't I *always* get this message?

>One of the benefits of have a local email system is getting stuff from
>cron et al. Also, you can use it for spooling - if mutt sends via the
>local email system you can send when offline - it will just queue.
>
>>One concern based on earlier discussion in this thread.  I am now using
>>msmtp as my MTA client.  What will happen if I send an email when, for
>>whatever reason, Gmail connectivity is broken?  Will it get resent?
>
>I don't know. What does its manual say?

<Grrr>  You don't know how much documentation and search results I have been
reading the past few days!  My head is spinning chock full of half-understood
information about multiple email software and topics!!

As far as I have been able to tell from the man pages msmtp will attempt to
send me a notification email in the event of delivery failure.  AFAICT, there
is no explicit mention of msmtp trying to resend the email.  Also it is not
clear to me if delivery failure includes not being able to connect to the
Internet.  It did say it uses standard exit codes, but I did not see how it
would act in this instance.

I am doing some online searching, but the answer I desire isn't coming up with
my current search terms.  But I will persist.  I always seem to do...

-- 
Wishing you only the best,

boB Stepp