zenarmor periodicals cron job noise filling /var/spool/clientmqueue

[Isabella Borgward]

My /var/spool/clientmqueue had literally hundreds of thousands of files in it. They are all just a UUID. The message info indicates that they are caused by this cron job:

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# crontab -u nobody -l
# or /usr/local/etc/cron.d and follow the same format as
# /etc/crontab, see the crontab(5) manual page.
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
#minute hour    mday    month   wday    command
# Origin/Description: Zenarmor/Zenarmor periodicals
*       *       *       *       *       /usr/local/sbin/configctl -d 'zenarmor periodicals' '>' /dev/null '2>&1'



Note the quotes around the >.
This does not work as intended:

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# /usr/local/sbin/configctl -d 'zenarmor periodicals' '>' /dev/null '2>&1'
3fc7e3fa-5fbb-46f6-9069-939c2b154e05



This does:

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# /usr/local/sbin/configctl -d 'zenarmor periodicals' > /dev/null '2>&1'
#


I don't really know configctl but it also has a -q option to suppress stdout, perhaps that would make sense here.

[sy]

Hi,

We have reproduced the issue and determined that it is related to a connection timeout issue and attempting to send an email. The emails are currently stuck in the queue. We are actively working on a solution and will update you soon.

[sy]

Hi,

It seems that the issue occurs with any cronjob. We are informing OPNsense side. Thanks again for reporting.

[Isabella Borgward]

This still happens with current versions of OpnSense + Zenarmor. Simply redirecting the output of "zenarmor peridiocals" to /dev/null would fix this.

[sy]

Hi,

There might be a problem with the email queue again. Can you share a report by following the instructions in the below link

https://www.zenarmor.com/docs/support/reporting-bug

[Isabella Borgward]

Bug reported.
I notice that in the current version of Zenarmor [vs whatever version it was in July 2024], it doesn't attempt to redirect output at all.