Unusual error "DSN: Can't create output"

[Kim Kendall]

Began getting this unusual error. Nothing (that I can see) has changed lately.

Any ideas what is causing this?

[Brian Bergstrand]

This is usually due to some type of permissions problem. Maybe oracle's .forward file (if there is one)? Perms in the path to oracle's home dir?

Maybe someplace to look.

HTH.

[Mark Grant]

This is a message from your mail agent, probably sendmail.

It could mean that sendmail it trying to create output files /var/adm/mqueue (I think it's there) and it doesn't have permission. I am no sendmail expert though!

[Kim Kendall]

Oracle's home is owned by that account and every file in it.

/var/spool/mqueue is owned by bin:bin and has perms of 755

[Mark Grant]

I hadn't actually noticed your attachment so the sendmail information wasn't particularly new was it :)

Check the ownership of oracle's mail file which I think is in /var/spool/mail and make sure it is writable by sendmail, also check you haven't run out of disk space there too. Definately looks like a permissions problem in the mail system somewhere.

[Brian Bergstrand]

I don't think this is a problem with the mqueue. This is a problem delivering mail to the local user. Do you have quotas enabled? Is the FS that the home dir on full? What are the perms on each directory in the home dir path? There's probably something else that I'm missing, but you get the idea.

[Kim Kendall]

Interesting...

Looked again in the /usr/mail directory

2 files were in there :

oracle.lock
oracle.unprocess

They have the same date...about when the problem started. It's also the same time stamp that's on the "oracle" mail file.

I removed them and moved the "oracle" mail file to a new name. A new "oracle" mail file was created by the system with perms of 660 and ownership of oracle:mail (which is what it was before).

I'll see if that cures the issue.

[Kim Kendall]

Looks like it was the /usr/mail/oracle.lock file that was the problem. I don't know where it came from, but making it 'go-away' seems to have stopped the messages in the mail.log

Thanks.