sendmail alias permission error

[Alan Meyer_4]

when I start sendmail via /sbin/init.d/sendmail start, I get the following error

newaliases: cannot open /etc/mail/aliases: Permission denied

I am executing this as root and the permissions on the files in /etc/mail are as follows:

-rw-r----- 1 root bin 880 Jun 2 09:37 aliases
-rw-r----- 1 root bin 24576 Jun 6 2004 aliases.db
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 10222 Nov 14 2000 mailcap
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 94286 Apr 1 2003 sendmail.cf
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 747 Jul 12 2003 sendmail.cw
-rw------- 1 root mail 34 Jun 2 10:01 sendmail.pid
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 1012 Nov 14 2000 service.switch


help~

Thanks,
-Alan

[Pete Randall]

Alan,

I believe aliases needs to be -r--r--r-- .


Pete

[Pete Randall]

as does aliases.db

Pete

[Alan Meyer_4]

with the aliases files at 444 I get the following:

warning: /etc/mail/aliases has world read or write permission. This is unsafe.
warning: /etc/mail/aliases.db has world read or write permission. This is unsafe.
hash map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/mail/aliases.db: Permission denied
dbm map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/mail/aliases: Permission denied
WARNING: cannot open alias database /etc/mail/aliases
Cannot create database for alias file /etc/mail/aliases

[Marvin Strong]

/etc/mail/aliases and aliases.db should be 640

/etc/mail should be 555 what are its permissions?

[Alan Meyer_4]

aliases are back to 640 and /etc/mail has been at 555. Which is what they were set at when this all began.

[Rick Garland]

Check the permissions from the root on down through the mail directory - make sure the root is not world write.


/ drwxr-xr-x
/etc drwxr-xr-x
/etc/mail drwxr-xr-x

[Marvin Strong]

Can you run newaliases as root from a command line without an error?

Not the init script just the newaliases command.

[Alan Meyer_4]

No, the newaliases command results in the same error.

[Alan Meyer_4]

the permissions are set correct.y all the way up

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Alan,

What are the ownerships? should be:

/ root root
/etc bin bin
/etc/mail bin bin
/etc/mail/aliases root bin
/etc/mail/aliases.db root mail

HTH,
Jeff

[Alan Meyer_4]

all the protections and ownership are as specified with no change in the results.

[Rick Garland]

View the sendmail.cf file. In the file you will see the line that indicates where the aliases file is located. Is this saying /etc/mail/aliases? Does it say something else?

[Alan Meyer_4]

here's the entry in the sendmail.cf file

O AliasFile=/etc/mail/aliases

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi (again) Alan,

OK - I'm now convinced the problem is the sendmail binary itself. newaliases is simply a link to /usr/sbin/sendmail. So what's perms/ownership on it? Should be:

-r-sr-sr-t root mail

Then run what on it & make sure the version it returns matches the version listed in the sendmail.cf file - it's the DZ value.

HTH,
Jeff

[Alan Meyer_4]

the protections and ownership seem ok on the sendmail file. What tells me that the version is 8.11.1, the DZ value is 8.9.3

Where do I go from here?

[Bejoy C Alias]

Just for a checking give 666 permission to aliases and aliases.db and do a 'sendmail -bi' or newaliases.

[Bejoy C Alias]

OR do 'makemap hash ./aliases < ./aliases' and check whether this works ..

[Alan Meyer_4]

changing the permissions to 666 generates:

newaliases: cannot open /etc/mail/aliases: Group writable file

for the sendmail -bi and newaliases command.

the makemap command seemed to work, but, I still cannot restart sendmail without the error message and the mail queued in the mqueue directory will not go away.

[Jeff Schussele · Accepted solution]

OK - it appears you upgraded sendmail - probably via a patch - but the sedndmail.cf file was *not* overwritten with the new version.
I would probably stop sendmail and reapply the patch - should be listed in the sendmail what output. Afterwards make sure the new sendmail.cf file has been written.
NOTE: you'll have to reapply any mods to the file like the smart relay, domain & such.
Then retry the newaliases command.
Let us know how it goes.

HTH,
Jeff

[Alan Meyer_4]

I reinstalled sendmail again, but the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file still did not get replaced. So I went to find the new one which was located under the /usr/contrib/sendmail tree and copied it to /etc/mail and restarted sendmail.

Now all is right with the world and the aliases work and the mqueue directory emptied out.

thanks for all your persistance in helping me.

-Alan