KACE Product Support

These are emails sent out by the underlying OS (FreeBSD) for nightly cron jobs. That is why they come from "Charlie Root". I'm not sure if there is a way to disable them - without hacking the KBOX and modifying the cron jobs yourself (which is fairly easy to do if you have local access - but wave goodbye to KACE Support). It may be a good idea to keep these emails archived somewhere just in case you ever need to look at historical data. If you don't understand the technical jargon inside, at least they let you know that the KBOX is operating properly.

I'd suggest submitting a ticket to KACE if you want to find out if there is a way to disable these emails. You could go into General settings and change the administrative email address to a non-existent address, but this would probably affect some other emails you receive from the KBOX.

I agree there is room for improvement regarding emails from the system, helpdesk, and reporting, and probably others. More configuration options is what I continually request via enhancement requests. I suggest posting your own enhancement requests. The more they hear the more likely they are to address a need.

For the nightly emails just create a mail rule to automatically archive/delete them. That's the simplest fix here- I haven't seen a nightly email in 5 years.

airwolf - good to know that the OS is creating them... but the output could be wrapped and then sent by KACE's software instead of directly by the OS. Yeah, i know it would be easy to hack, but im trying to play by the rules. I do understand the content, I just simply dont care unless there actually is a problem.

cblake - Yeah, ill submit one. I just wanted to see if other people already submitted one and if they didnt like the emails as well. I do have a rule to punt the emails to a folder, but the problem with that approach is that when a real problem does arise I never notice it because it gets lost in the mess of the other emails.

Thanks for the input guys!

Those emails are run by a scheduled task. At the moment email filtering is your best bet if you want to ignore them. The emails are the result of diagnostic commands run every night. These commands are, for the most part, not aware of what a problem is versus a stable state. They report status and a problem is just the current status. The output is a status and to interpret or take action on the possible results would require a lot of logic. Not impossible but it is unlikely that any logic implemented would be sufficient to cover all scenarios. To advertise such would be a false sense of security and would lead admins to ignore these emails and neuter their ability to interpret and act on warning signs that can prevent full failure.

I recommend that you take a minute or two every day to read them. In the early days that might mean 10-15 minutes, but you'll get to used to seeing the same thing every day and become skilled at analyzing them. When you notice a deviation then you'll know it and be able to more easily interpret it. For example, disk usage.

If you see a section that is greek to you then post here, google the command or call tech support.

Obviously all of this analysis needs to be weighed against your corporate standards of cost to benefit. If you do not think the cost:benefit ratio is worth this time investment or augments your ability to troubleshoot and resolve an issue then be prepared to restore your backup or get a new kbox if necessary. Here is the FAQ to schedule backups on your kbox using a windows client ( http://www.kace.com/support/customer/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=1&id=590&artlang=en)