Have CRON Log To A Separate File

Sometimes you might want to have cron events logged to a file other than the standard syslog (/var/log/syslog)

This is how you do it.

Edit this file;

vi /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf

Find the line starting with #cron.* and uncomment it.

This will cause all cron events to be logged to /var/log/cron.log (unless you changed  the path) however the same events will also continue to be logged to syslog.

In the same file, find the line that looks like this;

*.*;auth,authpriv.none  -/var/log/syslog

Alter the line so that it looks like this;

*.*;auth,authpriv.none;cron.none  -/var/log/syslog

Restart the logging service;

service rsyslog restart

Now cron will log to /var/log/cron.log but not to syslog

Stop cron jobs from sending email

If you have a cronjob that is constantly spamming you with emails, then add the following to the offending line in your crontab;

>> /dev/null 2>&1

Example;

* * * * * root /root/checkvpn.cron >> /dev/null 2>&1

Voila! No more annoying emails!