Re: [bug-mailutils] Mail, sends to dead.letter once in a while, to black hole mostly

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 04 July 2013 19:17:07 Sergey Poznyakoff did opine:

> Gene Heskett <address@hidden> ha escrit:
> > sendmail was not logging, and when it is, apparently sends this stuff
> > to the rsyslog.
> 
> It always is, and it always sends its messages to syslog, which is the
> 
> right thing, because:
> > Shame on sendmail, it should keep its own logs instead of
> > having to search thru /var/log/messages.
> 
> Not at all, it is quite right in doing so. Every program *must* use
> syslog for its diagnostics purposes. There's no other way to keep proper
> logs on the system.
> 
> > As far as perms, I am the only user on this system.
> 
> Yeah, I've already guessed you are. Which does not change the fact that
> UNIX historically was, and still is a multi-user system and whatever it
> does is directed to keep the privacy of its users unharmed. That's why,
> in particular, all mailboxes have 0600 permissions. Trying to relax the
> permissions will usually result in MDA refusing to deliver messages to
> such a mailbox, which will be considered unsafe.
> 
> > So I have added my self to the /etc/group file for those users I need
> > to be able to see without doing a sudo -i.  That did not suffice for
> > this.  Is there a better way?
> 
> The only way to read the other user's mail is from the root account,
> which by definition can do anything. Root can invoke "mail -f username".
> 
> > I did find this in this mornings /var/log/mail.log
> 
> These are the bits I was talking about.
> 
> > Jul  4 02:02:46 coyote sendmail[16012]: r645K1Np016012: from=amanda,
> > size=711, class=0,
> > nrcpts=1, msgid=<address@hidden>,
> > address@hidden
> 
> This record tells that the message from user "amanda" was assigned
> queue id r645K1Np016012 and was delivered via localhost.
> 
> The following record bears a different queue id:
> > Jul  4 02:02:46 coyote sm-mta[19315]: r6462kMf019315:
> > from=<address@hidden>, size=985, class=0, nrcpts=1,
> > msgid=<address@hidden>, proto=ESMTP,
> > daemon=MTA-v4, relay=localhost [127.0.0.1]
> 
> It is issued by the mail transfer daemon which took the message over
> from the mail submission agent (it is reflected in the msgid, which is
> marked with the previous queue id).
> 
> Now, the third record:
> > Jul  4 02:02:46 coyote sendmail[16012]: r645K1Np016012: to=amanda,
> > ctladdr=amanda (1001/1002), delay=00:42:45, xdelay=00:00:00,
> > mailer=relay, pri=30711, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=2.0.0,
> > stat=Sent (r6462kMf019315 Message accepted for delivery)
> 
> describes the further fate of that same message.  It informs you that
> the message was successfully delivered to the user "amanda" (sic!)
> 
> As a side-note, pay attention to the message issued by the mail delivery
> 
> agent itself:
> > Jul  4 02:02:46 coyote procmail[19317]: Enforcing stricter permissions
> > on "/var/mail/amanda"
> 
> As I said above, it encountered the mailbox permissions to be unsafe
> and fixed them.
> 
> Now, since the mail submission agent was instructed to deliver the mail
> to <address@hidden> (as the verbose output from mail showed),
> and the mail delivery agent directed it to the local user "amanda", we
> can deduce that your MTA (or MDA() configuration expressly redirects all
> mail to (at least) <address@hidden> to that local user.

The MDA, procmail, is AFAIK, only involved with the output of fetchmail.  
And its logs do not show any activity for the msgs in question.  But I will 
check.  Nope, grep amanda /var/log/procmail.log is null.

> That
> can happen because of the alias record expressly redirecting the mail,
> or due to a ".forward" file in your home directory, or due to some other
> kind of aliasing enabled in your sendmail configuration.

This is possible, but should not that .forward exist in the ~/amanda 
directory?  It doesn't exist in either.  Nor does a .forward.

Aliases has a manpage, but forward doesn't.  Where do I find docs on that?

> I can tell the exact reason only by taking a look at your sendmail
> configuration.

sendmail.cf is attached.
 
> Regards,
> Sergey

Thank you Sergey.

Cheers, Gene
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sendmail.cf
Description: Text document