I have a simple bash script running the following command:

service mysql status | mail -s "MySQL service" myname@example.com

I have added it to the crontab of the root user:

sudo crontab -e

Using the following command:

*/1 * * * * bash /home/myname/cron/mysql.sh

And the resulting email contains this:

* /usr/bin/mysqladmin Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.5.37, for debian-linux-gnu on x86_64
Copyright (c) 2000, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Server version 5.5.37-0ubuntu0.14.04.1
Protocol version 10
Connection Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Uptime: 3 hours 25 min 22 sec

These complicated statistics are are not expected value from the ‘service mysql status’ command.

When I run the batch file manually as root:

sudo bash mysql.sh

The resulting email contains the expected result:

mysql start/running, process 11928

So why is the 'service mysql status’ command returning an unexpected value when run from a batch file inside the root cron job?