Mail stopped working??

[Robert C. Dunavent]

Model= HP9000/889/K460 HP-UX 10.2

Mysteriously, I stopped receiving root???s e-mail on 13JUNE. When I look at another machine which is working properly, I see this:

msphbos0ROOT:ps ???eaf | grep sendmail
root 1874 1 0 Mar 26 ? 1:29 sendmail: accepting connections on port 25

When I try the same thing on the bad machine, I see this:

msphnyc1ROOT:ps ???eaf | grep sendmail
root 26759 1 0 08:49:58 ? 0:00 sendmail: accepting connections

Notice that on the bad machine, it does not specify port 25. Could this be my problem?

I have tried a /sbin/init.d/sendmail stop and /sbin/init.d/sendmail start. I have also tried a sendmail ???bd.

Also, I have seen in previous posts that I might have to rm /etc/mail/sendmail.pid, but when I do a ls ???al from /etc/mail, this is all I see:

msphnyc1ROOT:ll
total 144
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 948 Jun 7 1996 aliases
-rw-r--r-- 1 root mail 32768 Dec 3 1999 aliases.db
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 10203 May 30 1996 mailcap
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 27403 Jun 7 1996 sendmail.cf
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 702 Sep 22 1999 sendmail.cw
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 1002 Jun 7 1996 service.switch


Any idea why my mail is not working?

[Bruno Vidal]

Hi,
If you change nothing, it can be coming from the load of your system, sendmail is stopping to treat any mail if load average is bigger than a limit, take a look at:
#uptime
What are the last number, is it bigger than 8 (it is the default limit).

Cheers.

[Robert C. Dunavent]

msphnyc1ROOT:uptime
10:18am up 46 days, 8:02, 11 users, load average: 0.33, 0.28, 0.36

[Bruno Vidal]

Your load average is perfect, no problem on this side, you perhaps can try to send yourself an email by using mailx:
#mailx -s "test 1" root << EOF
type your text
EOF

and then just after take a look at /var/adm/syslog/mail.log and search for any explicit error.

cheers.

[Robert C. Dunavent]

I tried what you suggested. Here is what the mail.log says:

Jun 24 10:35:28 msphnyc1 sendmail[5531]: KAA05531: from=bkjb830, size=150, class
=0, pri=30150, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200306241435.KAA05531@msphnyc1.>, relay=root@loc
alhost
Jun 24 10:35:29 msphnyc1 sendmail[5532]: KAA05531: to=root, ctladdr=bkjb830 (129
/20), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, stat=Insufficient permissio
n: Error 0
Jun 24 10:35:29 msphnyc1 sendmail[5532]: KAA05531: KAA05532: postmaster notify:
Insufficient permission: Error 0


I see error messages for "insufficient permission". What the heck permissions is this error referring to???

-cd

[Bruno Vidal · Accepted solution]

It seems that something has change on permission for sendmail or in root directory.
So check is sendmail still have the set uid bit:
ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail
-r-sr-sr-T 1 root mail 970752 Mar 6 13:57 /usr/sbin/sendmail

Or, if you are using in ~root any .forward, check that it is correctly set to only root:

Check also the right in /etc/mail:
ll /etc/mail
total 250
-rw-r----- 1 root sys 835 Apr 26 2002 aliases
-rw-r----- 1 root mail 24576 Mar 11 11:54 aliases.db
-rw-r----- 1 root mail 0 Apr 26 2002 aliases.dir
-rw-r----- 1 root mail 1024 Apr 26 2002 aliases.pag
-rw-r----- 1 bin bin 10203 Oct 27 1997 mailcap
-rw-r----- 1 bin bin 86833 Feb 24 1999 sendmail.cf
-rw-r----- 1 bin bin 727 Apr 26 2002 sendmail.cw
-rw------- 1 root mail 33 Mar 11 11:54 sendmail.pid
-rw-r----- 1 bin bin 1075 Apr 26 2002 service.switch


As you see it is readable only for root -> it is a security check from sendmail to ensure that nobody is changing the rules.

Cheers.