The program destination runs the program once, and keeps it running. You should read messages line by line like this: #!/bin/sh while read line; do echo $line | mail -s "log alert" done -- Bazsi PGP info: KeyID 9AF8D0A9 Fingerprint CD27 CFB0 802C 0944 9CFD 804E C82C 8EB1 url: http://www.balabit.hu/pgpkey.txt