# CRON No MTA installed discarding output

Answer from [here](https://askubuntu.com/questions/222512/cron-info-no-mta-installed-discarding-output-error-in-the-syslog)

> Linux uses mail for sending notifications to the user. Most Linux distributions have a mail service including an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) installed. Ubuntu doesn't though.
> 
> You can install a mail service, postfix for example, to solve this problem.
> 
> ```
> sudo apt-get install postfix
> 
> ```
> 
> Or you can ignore it. I don't think the inability of cron to send messages has anything to do with the CPU spike (that's linked to the underlying job that cron is running). It might be safest to install an MTA and then read through the messages (`mutt` is a good system mail reader).

<div class="mt24" id="bkmrk-the-best-option-seem"><div class="mt24"><div class="d-flex fw-wrap ai-start jc-end gs8 gsy">The [best option](https://askubuntu.com/a/804289) seems to be redirect all output to a log file:</div><div class="d-flex fw-wrap ai-start jc-end gs8 gsy"></div></div></div>> (use `sudo` if the issue is with root’s crontab) and add `>> <em>/some/log/file</em> 2>&1` after every command, like this:

```
0 3 * * * <em>cmd</em>  >> <em>/some/log/file</em> 2>&1
```