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Paul
Asked: 2022-01-25 07:36:41 +0800 CST

Is it possible to change 'From: [email protected] (Cron Daemon)' to conform to RFC 5322 angle-addr or name-addr format?

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When my server sends messages generated by cron jobs, the all have the following From: header:

From: [email protected] (Cron Daemon)

Based on answers in this Server Fault question I am concluding this is a legacy format that SHOULD NOT be used based on this note in RFC 5322 3.4.1:

Note: Some legacy implementations used the simple form where the addr-spec appears without the angle brackets, but included the name of the recipient in parentheses as a comment following the addr-spec. Since the meaning of the information in a comment is unspecified, implementations SHOULD use the full name-addr form of the mailbox, instead of the legacy form, to specify the display name associated with a mailbox. Also, because some legacy implementations interpret the comment, comments generally SHOULD NOT be used in address fields to avoid confusing such implementations.

Here are the above referenced specifications:

name-addr       =   [display-name] angle-addr
angle-addr      =   [CFWS] "<" addr-spec ">" [CFWS] /
                    obs-angle-addr
addr-spec       =   local-part "@" domain

Since postfix uses From: headers generated by other system daemons that conform to addr-spec, I am assuming this is some sort of an issue related to cron, but I may be wrong on that, as I am not clear how these are configured, but it is for all messages generated by cron jobs.

Is it possible to change the From: header to conform to the referenced specifications for cron jobs?

18.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It is not possible to change the From: address for cron jobs. This is hard-coded and it is specific to Debian cron.

    A February 2021 commit to salsa includes a fix to optionally change the From: address.

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