I don't know why I have these mail problems every now and then, and I sure don't understand how this one happend, but...
At least it appears to be fixed now.
Although sendmail appeared to be starting correctly, mail wasn't working. When I checked the maillog, I saw that I was getting a number of strange errors including:
Aug 29 15:10:02 eclectic2 fetchmail[1323]: SMTP connect to localhost failed
Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1733]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): drop_privileges
: setuid(0) succeeded (when it should not): Operation not permitted Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1746]: starting daemon (8.11.6): SMTP+queuein
g@01:00:00 Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1746]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): opendaemonsocke
t: daemon MTA: cannot bind: Permission denied Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1746]: daemon MTA: problem creating SMTP sock
et
I tried rebuilding my sendmail.cf file - no luck.
Finally, I found this posting which provided the fix:
> The drop_priviliges: setuid(0) happens (as a case and point)
> when I run /usr/lib/sendmail -bi (a.k.a newaliases) as root
Changing settings from
> -r-s------ mailnull mailnull /usr/lib/sendmail
to
> -r-x------ 1 root mailnull /usr/lib/sendmail
Made the error with /usr/lib/sendmail -bi go away
I have no idea how the permissions on the file changed (which is a bit concerning) but, at least mail is working again.
Digg It!
Bookmark it!
Posted by David at August 29, 2004 08:29 PM | Categorized under: A day in the life