How to get email working on Pidora

[Joe Schmoe]

Running Pidora installed via NOOBS.

Noticed that sendmail (and friends) is installed by default and seems to be working - but doesn't work. Note, BTW, that sendmail and friends is *not* installed/configured by default in Raspbian, and it is a frequent forum query to ask how to get it working (often in the context of "cron" - that is, people wonder why their cron jobs aren't working - and the real answer is "because they can't see the error messages - because email isn't configured." - but I digress...).

Anyway, back to Pidora... It seems that it (email) works (sort of) for local users, but fails (with the usual sort of error messages - cannot contact server, etc) when sending offsite.

Has anyone gotten this to work?

P.S. Also, it seems cron is disable by default in Pidora. How to turn that on?

[Joe Schmoe]

A couple of added notes:

1) It is funny that Raspbian comes with cron on, but email not - and Pidora is just the opposite (except, of course, for the fact that email doesn't work - but at least it is there...)

2) To turn cron on in Pidora: service crond start
(Not sure yet if this persists across reboot...)

[ruggerio]

beware of systemd from Fedora 18 on.

systemctl is-enabled crond.service --> checks, if cron will be started on boot or not
systemctl enable crond.service --> enables it for start, if its not done.
systemctl disable crond.service --> disables it for start, manual start will go anyway
systemctl start crond.service --> manual start of cron
systemctl status crond.service --> gives status information about it

For mail:

ouch, i do not remember removing sendmail, as i use postfix, which is quite simpler to configure. Using Postfix will send mails within a few minutes.

Cheers,
Roger