Topic: mailfilter: Error: Could not access the logfile

[Jason Judge]

Hi,

My SME server 5.1.2 has suddenly started sending this e-mail to the admin account each time it polls for mail (every 15 minutes). It has never done this before and was wondering if anyone else has encountered it:

From: Cron Daemon
To: root@mydomain.co.uk
Subject: Cron /etc/startmail

Body:-
mailfilter: Error: Could not access the logfile. Check the file permissions of your logfile and make sure the rcfile contains the correct path.

---------------

I can send manual e-mail to root okay. The only thing I did was add a new virtual domain (a sub-domain), but removing it does not fix the problem. I am not sure exactly which rcfile the e-mail refers to, and why root does not seem to be able to access it (permissions should be beyond root).

Thanks,

-- Jason

[stephen noble]

jason,

[root@server root]# ls -la /var/log/mailfilter
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            0 Dec 14 02:22 /var/log/mailfilter

if you
touch /var/log/mailfilter
the problem should stop, don't know why it started
check /etc/fetchmail see if mailfilter is being called

regards
stephen noble

[Jason Judge]

Touching that file did not make a difference. By chance (?) the file was dated 10 calander months ago, to the day the problem started.

I have enabled verbose mode in /etc/fetchmail. The only extra information it includes in the e-mail is:

   #**********.********.*******.************.***

That's verbose alright, but in *whispered tones*. Unless someone understands a message hidden in Morse, I don't think this is very useful.


There is one entry in /etc/fetchmail that relates to mail filters, and that is at the end of one of the pop-mail entries:

   preconnect "/usr/bin/mailfilter --mailfilterrc /etc/mailfilterrc"

The file /etc/mailfilterrc is empty. Could that be the problem? If I remove the pre-filter line (and find out what is putting it in) then would that solve the problem. I assume if the mailfilterrc file is empty, then it can't be doing much. I'm not sure why it is just on one of the pop-mail entries, and on nothing else.

-- Jason

[Jason Judge]

I've commented out the pre-filter line from /etc/fetchmail, and it seems to have cleared up the problem. There was an entry in the dungog "pop3's and prefilter" pane for the pop3 account in question.

Now what I have noticed is that no matter what I change in that pane, the /etc/fetchmail file never gets rebuilt from the templates. I suspect the problem started last week when I changed something else (added a virtual domain) that _did_ get that file rebuilt. The dungog pane does save its changes in the database though, so it looks like it is working, but it's not actually having the effect it should.

I guess a dodgy pre-filter entry has been sat there in the database for a while, just waiting to pop out and get me.

Thanks,

-- Jason

[stephen noble]

This sounds like a problem that was fixed in an rpm update last may
if we assume for the moment it was...
it's the type of problem i wrote a update to the devinfo-mitel-update-system-0.0.1 rpm for. Think of it as a poor mans blades

http://www.dungog.net/sme/howto/install.php
&
http://www.dungog.net/sme/howto/demo/demo-install-url.html

Compares a text file at a url with existing installed
rpms to determine if updates are available

%changelog
* Fri Feb 14 2003 Stephen Noble
- --nodeps option added to advanced
- [0.0.1-14]
* Tue Feb 11 2003 Stephen Noble
- function to check for and display update information
- db_get_prop(\%conf, 'URLlist', "host") || 'http://www.dungog.net/dungog-update.txt'

you can change the db value easy enough to create your own list,
wouldn't be too hard to combine multiple lists/urls

regards
stephen noble

[Jason Judge]

Thanks again.

I was going to send you the versions of the Multi-pop I'm using, but I forgot to take a look last night. The sever was built last April, and apart from keeping up with the security patches, I haven't updated any other modules, so I'm using what-ever was current in April. Looks like I missed the May update, so I'll take another look.

I've otherwise tweaked the server in many other ways (mostly last April), so I have to be careful what I update as I don't want to loose my port-forwarding, CVS or configuration tweaks.

That RPM update notifier (tech-man's blade looks good. Thanks for that!

-- JJ

[Leon Uys]

I am having a similar problem, I think, in that I get hundreds of messages for ADMIN from cron daemon that says "/etc/startmail: : command not found" on SME v 5.5 ... similar to what I was getting in V5.1.2. Only problem is I read the previous logs and I don't seem to have the same files or lines in /etc/fetchmail

Any idea where this message comes from?