Savemail panic, cannot save rejected email anywhere

[Mantazz]

I'm not sure what to do about the following lines that recently started showing up in /var/log/messages on my FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE server at home:

Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n05CBoHb001464: Losing ./qfn05CBoHb001464: savemail panic
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n05CBoHb001464: SYSERR(root): savemail: cannot save rejected email anywhere
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n05CBoHc001464: Losing ./qfn05CBoHc001464: savemail panic
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n05CBoHc001464: SYSERR(root): savemail: cannot save rejected email anywhere
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n0684OXl004673: Losing ./qfn0684OXl004673: savemail panic
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n0684OXl004673: SYSERR(root): savemail: cannot save rejected email anywhere
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n0684OXn004673: Losing ./qfn0684OXn004673: savemail panic
Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n0684OXn004673: SYSERR(root): savemail: cannot save rejected email anywhere

I've googled for this problem but nothing I have found so far seems to apply. I checked for /usr/sbin/sendmail, and it is indeed a symlink to /usr/sbin/mailwrapper. The file /etc/mail/mailer.conf has the following:

# $FreeBSD: src/etc/mail/mailer.conf,v 1.3 2002/04/05 04:25:12 gshapiro Exp $
#
# Execute the "real" sendmail program, named /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
#
sendmail        /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
send-mail       /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
mailq           /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
newaliases      /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
hoststat        /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
purgestat       /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail

I'm not sure what to check next. I have only been seeing this error message for the past few days on my system, and I do not recall having seen it at all prior to 29 December.

This system does not ordinarily send mail out; indeed I do not even own a domain to send mail out from...

[DutchDaemon]

There should be more information in /var/log/maillog. Perhaps email to root cannot be delivered, not even locally.

[Mantazz]

Here is a line that caught my eye in /var/log/maillog

Jan  6 03:04:24 sendmail[4673]: n05CBoHb001464: to=<root@myserver.org>, delay=19:50:19, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=363219
9, relay=local, dsn=5.2.0, stat=Service unavailable (/var/mail/root: irregular f
ile)

(where myserver.org is in the place of what I actually call the system)
I then checked /var/mail/root:

ls -ltd /var/mail/root
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  mail  13 Dec 21 10:03 /var/mail/root -> /root/varmail

Which was something I did a while ago because the file was too large for the partition I made for /var. We can then look at /root/varmail:

 ls -ltd /root/varmail 
-rw-------  1 root  wheel  45164271 Jan  6 10:25 /root/varmail

Did I hopelessly break something here? I notice that for other users' mail files, the permissions are generally 600, which matches the permissions on /root/varmail.

[DutchDaemon]

I think the problem is that the directory /root is not writable by 'mail'

Try using /root/mail/varmail and do

chown root:mail /root/mail
chmod 775 /root/mail

[DutchDaemon]

Note: I'm not entirely sure whether the root mailbox can be symlinked like that. Sendmail likes a normail mailbox file to drop mail in, but if it can't follow the symlink due to a privilege problem, it may not report that correctly.

[Mantazz]

Originally Posted by DutchDaemon

I think the problem is that the directory /root is not writable by 'mail'

Try using /root/mail/varmail and do

chown root:mail /root/mail
chmod 775 /root/mail

I will try it and see if that helps, but I'm a little puzzled why it would matter. All the other mailboxes are set to 600, and that seems to work just fine for the minute amount of mail (almost entirely from cron) that moves on this system.

Why would the root mailbox need different permissions? That seems less than ideal, for sure...

[DutchDaemon]

It's not so much about the mailbox permissions. All other mailboxes are in a directory that's writable by 'mail' (i.e. /var/mail). Your root mailbox is symlinked to a mailbox in the directory /root, which is not writable by 'mail'. That's why I suggest you create a subdirectory named 'mail' under /root that is writable by 'mail'. Still not sure about the symlink being acceptable for Sendmail, but one step at a time.

[Mantazz]

Hmm, this doesn't seem to be solving the problem yet. As root, I made a directory /root/Varmail for the file /root/Varmail/varmail:

>ls -ltd /root/Varmail
drwxrw----  2 root  mail  512 Jan  9 12:22 /root/Varmail

And the file inside it is called "varmail":

 ls -tld /root/Varmail/varmail 
-rwxrw----  1 root  mail  45164271 Jan  6 10:25 /root/Varmail/varmail

There is then a symbolic link from /var/mail for this file:

ls -ltd /var/mail/root
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  mail  21 Jan  9 12:23 /var/mail/root -> /root/Varmail/varmail

But I still get the savemail panics in my daily logs. I see that the last entry in /root/Varmail/varmail dates from December 19, which was after I had moved the mail file.

[DutchDaemon]

I just more or less copied your setup, although my local delivery agent is procmail. What procmail does it this:

This is in /var/mail

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root      mail        15 Jan 10 22:28 BOGUS.root.NQR -> /root/mail/root
-rw-------   1 root      mail      1093 Jan 10 22:29 root

In other words: symlinks are not acceptable to procmail, which moves the symlinked mailbox out of the way, adding 'BOGUS' to its name, and recreates a mailbox called 'root' where it delivers the mail to.

Based on that I'd say symlinking a mailbox from /var/mail, even with correct ownership and privileges, is not possible.

[Mantazz]

Originally Posted by DutchDaemon

I just more or less copied your setup, although my local delivery agent is procmail. What procmail does it this:

This is in /var/mail

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root      mail        15 Jan 10 22:28 BOGUS.root.NQR -> /root/mail/root
-rw-------   1 root      mail      1093 Jan 10 22:29 root

In other words: symlinks are not acceptable to procmail, which moves the symlinked mailbox out of the way, adding 'BOGUS' to its name, and recreates a mailbox called 'root' where it delivers the mail to.

Based on that I'd say symlinking a mailbox from /var/mail, even with correct ownership and privileges, is not possible.

Interesting. I have created a new file "root" in /var/mail with the appropriate permissions to see how sendmail and savemail react.

I suspect the conclusion here may be that I made a foolish administrative decision when I set up this system at home - I made /var its own 100MB partition, while giving around 50GB to / and 230GB to /usr. Clearly I should have given more space to /var...

Having seen that sendmail dislikes symlink files, I wonder if I could get away with a symlink directory instead? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make a varmail directory in /usr, that /var/mail points to as a symlink itself? Then I could move all the mailboxes from /var/mail to /usr...

[J65nko]

DutchDaemon,

Does procmail complain if you chmod the link itself to rw for root only, by using the "-h' flag to chmod?

# chmod -h 600

[DutchDaemon]

Originally Posted by Mantazz

Having seen that sendmail dislikes symlink files, I wonder if I could get away with a symlink directory instead? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make a varmail directory in /usr, that /var/mail points to as a symlink itself? Then I could move all the mailboxes from /var/mail to /usr...

That is certainly not a problem. I've had to symlink /var/mail to /usr/mail quiite a few times for lack of space, and it works fine.

[DutchDaemon]

Originally Posted by J65nko

DutchDaemon,

Does procmail complain if you chmod the link itself to rw for root only, by using the "-h' flag to chmod?

# chmod -h 600

lrw-------   1 root      mail          15 Jan 11 04:04 root -> /root/mail/root

Jan 11 04:05:21 server procmail[94814]: Renamed bogus "/var/mail/root" into "/var/mail/BOGUS.root.NQR"

lrw-------   1 root      mail          15 Jan 11 04:04 BOGUS.root.NQR -> /root/mail/root
-rw-------   1 root      mail        1053 Jan 11 04:05 root