Debian is what I use for most our my Linux servers (other than SME) but I have one older Redhat server that I still maintain.

I was messing with changes to the Logwatch emails (where they are sent: MailTo option) and had modified all the Debian settings easily by editing the /etc/cron.daily/00logwatch file which calls the Logwatch script with a parameter of ‘mailto: root’ as a default. Changing root to the email address was straight forward.

The Redhat setup was different in that the /etc/cron.daily script was a Perl script and while it had apparently editable settings, changing the setting threw an error.

Possible unintended interpolation of @mydomain in string at /etc/cron.daily/00-logwatch line 35.

The Perl compiler/interpreter was taking the email @ symbol and trying to read it as code. So I changed it back to the local root setting and did some research.

I think it’s just an issue with the way that Logwatch has been configured. The file I should have edited is the logwatch.conf and I found it in /etc/log.d/conf/logwatch.conf

Changing the MailTo setting in the .conf file worked fine.