Sending an Email Report with Cron

Set MAILTO at the top of the crontab and cron emails any job output to that address. For full control, pipe your report into the mail command. Both need a working local MTA (like postfix or msmtp).

Cron expression (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week)

MAILTO: auto-email job output

At the top of crontab -e:

MAILTO=you@example.com
0 8 * * * /opt/app/report.sh

Any output the job prints is emailed to you. Silent jobs send nothing.

Pipe to the mail command

For a subject line and explicit control:

0 8 * * * /opt/app/report.sh | mail -s 'Daily report' you@example.com

No email arriving?

Cron can only hand mail to a local MTA. Install and configure postfix or msmtp first, and check /var/log/mail.log. Without an MTA, MAILTO does nothing.

FAQ

How do I send an email from a cron job?

Set MAILTO=you@example.com at the top of the crontab, or pipe output to mail -s 'Subject' you@example.com. Both need a local MTA.

Why is MAILTO not sending mail?

Cron hands mail to a local MTA. If postfix or msmtp isn't installed and configured, nothing is delivered. Check /var/log/mail.log.

How do I set the subject of a cron email?

Pipe the output into mail with -s: /opt/app/report.sh | mail -s 'Daily report' you@example.com.