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Date:      Mon, 27 May 2002 13:15:04 +0200
From:      Jean-Yves Lefort <jylefort@brutele.be>
To:        Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   weird /etc/periodic and Postfix interaction
Message-ID:  <20020527131504.7eaa83bc.jylefort@brutele.be>

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Hi,

I have noticed the following error message appearing repeatedly in my
system logs:

May 27 11:06:03 jsite postfix/sendmail[71265]: fatal: usage: sendmail
[options]

After some investigation it seems that this message is provoked by the
daily jobs trying to mail the results.

The weird thing is that I receive the results as usual without any
problem, only Postfix issues this error.

Relevant /var/log/maillog section:

May 27 11:06:03 jsite postfix/pickup[70050]: 5BEA122EEB: uid=0
from=<root>
May 27 11:06:03 jsite postfix/cleanup[71240]: 5BEA122EEB:
message-id=<20020527090603.5BEA122EEB@jsite.lefort.net>
May 27 11:06:03 jsite postfix/qmgr[240]: 5BEA122EEB:
from=<root@jsite.lefort.net>, size=16816, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
May 27 11:06:03 jsite postfix/sendmail[71265]: fatal: usage: sendmail
[options]
May 27 11:06:15 jsite postfix/local[71260]: 5BEA122EEB:
to=<jylefort@jsite.lefort.net>, relay=local, delay=12, status=sent
("|/usr/local/bin/procmail")

By the way, the message with ID 5BEA122EEB which should not be received
due to a "fatal error", is in fact received correctly.

At this point I noticed that 'postfix/sendmail' should not be invoked,
since the mail is local, but hear more:

After looking into /usr/sbin/periodic, I retrieved the exact command
used to send that mail:

<OUTPUT FROM PROCESS> | mail -s "blah" root

(root is /etc/mail/alias'ed to my personal account, jylefort)

So, I logged in as root (to have the mail sent as root, like in the real
situation):

$ echo test | mail -s "blah" root

May 27 12:50:51 jsite postfix/pickup[18372]: A42B722EEB: uid=0
from=<root>
May 27 12:50:51 jsite postfix/cleanup[19797]: A42B722EEB:
message-id=<20020527105051.A42B722EEB@jsite.lefort.net>
May 27 12:50:51 jsite postfix/qmgr[240]: A42B722EEB:
from=<root@jsite.lefort.net>, size=307, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
May 27 12:50:59 jsite postfix/local[19798]: A42B722EEB:
to=<jylefort@jsite.lefort.net>, relay=local, delay=8, status=sent
("|/usr/local/bin/procmail")

This time, you can see that postfix/sendmail is (logically) not invoked,
and everything is fine.

I analyzed whole /etc/periodic and /usr/sbin/periodic, and I can't see
where is the problem.

Important detail: as far as I can remember I never encountered this
error before some days/weeks ago, it probably appeared with some recent
cvsup && make world.
By the way I diffed the FreeBSD's CVS repository in search of relevant
changes in /etc/periodic or /usr/sbin/periodic, and I found nothing
suspect.

My config:

$ uname -a
FreeBSD jsite.lefort.net 4.6-RC FreeBSD 4.6-RC #2: Sun May 19 02:35:00
CEST 2002     jylefort@jsite.lefort.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/JSITE  i386

$ pkg_info 'postfix*' | head -n 1
Information for postfix-1.1.7,1:

Experience reminds me that such apparently weird problems usually have
trivial solutions; any help will be _greatly_ appreciated :)

Regards,
Jean-Yves Lefort

--
Jean-Yves Lefort

jylefort@brutele.be
http://lefort.homeunix.org/

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