Not receiving emails

[C_V]

Hey guys there is a script in our server that emails the logs of a backup if completed successfully or not, but now it doesnt work its not sending any emails. But when i try doing this "cat logname |sendmail -v my_email" the email is delivered successfully. What could be wrong...

[TTr · Accepted solution]

First check the mail.log in your local server to see if the email is submitted to the sendmail service. It it is submited, check if it is sent out and if so check on the receiving end to see what happened to the email. It could be trapped by a spam filter or a delivery rule and it is deposited to some folder.

If the mail is not submitted to the local sendmail, check your script for errors. There could be a variable in your script that got set wrong or changed and it threw off the script syntax.

[C_V]

Hi i checked the mail log and found this... please see attached file

[Dennis Handly]

>But when i try doing this "cat logname | sendmail -v my_email" the email is delivered successfully.

And you are using the same "my_email" for both?

This info from your log doesn't tell you the reason it failed:
Final-Recipient: RFC822; email1
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Last-Attempt-Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:17:37 +1100 (EDT)

I would expect that if my_email matched one of the email1 it would work the same.

[C_V]

yes email1 and my_email are the same and yet no email is received.

Also i found something strange for me, i ps of sendmail and its not running.

[Patrick Wallek]

>>i ps of sendmail and its not running.

That is fine. E-mail CAN be sent without the sendmail process running.

The only reason for a sendmail process to run is if the server it is running on is supposed to **receive** e-mail messages from **other** servers.

[TTr]

> there is a script in our server that emails the logs of a backup

What email address is the script using? What server is that email address ? Is it the same server or another server.

Your attachement is not the mail.log, it is probably the root's mailbox. You need to look in /var/adm/syslog/mail.log, at the bottom to see what happens to the emails.

Does your script give any errors? Post the part of the script that sends the email.

[C_V]

They are using same server.

here is the part of the script that sends mail

echo "\n# Full Backup of `/usr/bin/hostname` completed at `/usr/bin/date +'%d %b %Y - %H:%M:%S'`\n" >> $LOGFILE 2>&1
/usr/bin/grep "\#" $LOGFILE | mailx -s "`/usr/bin/hostname` Backup log for `/usr/bin/date +'%d %b %Y'`" $MAIL
exit $?

I also tried to send a test email using mailx
and i got this result:

server1[crontabs]# echo "TESTING" | mailx -s "TESTING" email1
server1[crontabs]# Who are you?: Not a typewriter
syslog failed: Resource temporarily unavailable, syslog output to stderr
Sendmail: CAA27433: SYSERR(UID0): Who are you?: Not a typewriter
cannot open /no/such/directory/dead.letter: No such file or directory

Looks like that it hangs it stays there forever.

[TTr]

I found this reference for this error
"...This error occurs due to the user ID associated with the user 'nobody'. Verify the UID is a non-negative value..."

Do you have a "nobody" user in /etc/passwd and does it have a negative value?

I do not have a "nobody" user in my server and even after I created the "nobody" user, I could not reproduce the error.

See if you can install any sendmail patches.

Also check if the user $MAIL that the script uses, exists as a user or an alias.

Check the aliases file if there is anything unusual in there and rebuild the aliases database by running "newaliases".

Check all the file permissions and ownership in /etc/mail

Is there anything else at the bottom of /var/adm/syslog/mail.log when you try to send a test email?

[C_V]

Yes i found a nobody user with a negative value

$ grep -i nobody /etc/passwd
nobody:*:-2:-2::/:

[TTr]

If you can, delete the nobody user or change the UID to a positive value. If that fixes it, look into installing sendmail patches. Some other software might need the nobody user with the "-2" as the UID, GID. Check all other things I mentioned in the previous reply.

[C_V]

Hi for the mail.log there is no entry its not logging i think.

How do i check this:
"Also check if the user $MAIL that the script uses, exists as a user or an alias."

Here are the permission in /etc/mail:

-r--r--r-- 1 2 bin 947 Jul 4 2003 aliases
-rw-r--r-- 1 0 mail 24576 Dec 1 13:56 aliases.db
-r--r--r-- 1 2 bin 10222 Nov 14 2000 mailcap
-rw-r--r-- 1 0 sys 94316 Nov 7 2002 sendmail.cf
-r--r--r-- 1 2 bin 770 Dec 8 2004 sendmail.cw
-rw-r--r-- 1 0 sys 616 Mar 24 03:12 sendmail.st
-r--r--r-- 1 2 bin 1008 Nov 12 2001 service.switch

[TTr]

Something is preventing the user owner from displaying in /etc/mail. It shows "2" and "0" instead of "bin" and "root"
Post the output of

ll -d / /etc /etc/passwd

[C_V]

Here:

# ll -d /etc/passwd
-r--r--r-- 1 0 sys 7732 Mar 16 04:31 /etc/passwd

[TTr]

What about "ll -d / /etc"

I assume you ran the "ll -d /etc/passwd" as root based on the "#" prompt. It still does not show the user owner of the file. Instead of

-r--r--r-- 1 0 sys 7732 Mar 16 04:31 /etc/passwd

It should look like

-r--r--r-- 1 root sys 7732 Mar 16 04:31 /etc/passwd

Note that it should show "root" instead of "0" (zero). Check out the contents of /etc/password specifically the syntax about the root and other system user accounts such as bin.

[TTr]

> Check out the contents of /etc/password

That should be /etc/passwd

[C_V]

Here hope this helps

$ ll -d / /etc /etc/passwd
drwxr-xr-x 26 0 root 1024 Dec 16 21:32 /
dr-xr-xr-x 32 2 bin 7168 Mar 16 04:31 /etc
-r--r--r-- 1 0 sys 7732 Mar 16 04:31 /etc/passwd
$ more /etc/passwd
root:vUm/wrr2KDgKg:0:3:Root Account:/root:/sbin/sh
daemon:*:1:5::/:/sbin/sh
bin:*:2:2::/usr/bin:/sbin/sh
sys:*:3:3::/:
adm:*:4:4::/var/adm:/sbin/sh
uucp:*:5:3::/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lbin/uucp/uucico
lp:*:9:7::/var/spool/lp:/sbin/sh
nuucp:*:11:11::/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lbin/uucp/uucico
hpdb:*:27:1:ALLBASE:/:/sbin/sh
nobody:*:-2:-2::/:

[TTr]

It's what I asked before but unfortunately it does not help. When you run this "ll" commnad earlier were you logged in as root?

> # ll -d /etc/passwd
> -r--r--r-- 1 0 sys 7732 Mar 16 04:31 /etc/passwd

Also are you running NIS on this server? (type ypwhich)

[C_V]

Yes i was

NIS is not configured in the server

[Dennis Handly]

>TTr: delete the nobody user or change the UID to a positive value.

-2 is the proper value for nobody.

>Something is preventing the user owner from displaying in /etc/mail. It shows "2" and "0" instead of "bin" and "root"

The last time this happened, restarting pwgrd(1M) fixed it, not NIS.

[Dennis Handly]

# /sbin/init.d/pwgr stop
# /sbin/init.d/pwgr start