help, i cant install checkpassword for qmail!!!

budakbaru · 10-21-2007, 09:46 PM

after running my qmail for about 2 days non stop, i now receive this error at my log file,

alert: cannot start: qmail-send is already running

when i qmailctl stat, this stat appear

/service/qmail-send: up (pid 6365) 1 seconds
/service/qmail-send/log: up (pid 3174) 616 seconds
/service/qmail-smtpd: up (pid 3168) 616 seconds
/service/qmail-smtpd/log: up (pid 3169) 616 seconds
/service/qmail-pop3d: up (pid 3166) 616 seconds
/service/qmail-pop3d/log: up (pid 3167) 616 seconds
messages in queue: 1
messages in queue but not yet preprocessed: 0

it seems that my qmail send isnt working. i search the web and surprisingly, this error seem to happen to a lot of people. do you have any solution on how to solve this problem. bear in mind that during our previous discussion and posts, the qmail send was working fine as well as all of the services (up for more than a second).

budakbaru · 10-22-2007, 12:37 AM

i found out that there was 2 qmail-send service running at the same time. from my google, i found out that the problem lies with 2 service script running at the same time. i really dont know what this mean. i'm totally lost here. after rebooting the server a couple of times, the previous problem doesnt arise but i believe it still there. now, whenever i want to email my yahoo address, i dont know whether it is sending or not. in mail queue list, there is one message in process, but in the log directory, this message is recorded

@40000000471c328315a563b4 status: local 0/10 remote 1/20
@40000000471c328423dda5f4 delivery 14: deferral: Connected_to_209.191.118.103_but_greeting_failed./Remote_host_said:_421_Message_from_(60.48.117.107)_temporarily_deferred_-_4.16.50._Please_refer_to_http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html/
@40000000471c328423de0b84 status: local 0/10 remote 0/20

any ideas??

ghostdancer · 10-22-2007, 01:48 AM

qmail is design to have many small task running concurrently, so don't too alarm to see many qmail task. However, can you elaborate how did you find the error? Which log file you read from? You found it from the current file?

I think yahoo is blocking the email from your mail server. Does this machine has a valid DNS entry in your DNS server? It is possible yahoo block the email because it can not do a reverse-lookup of your mail server.

budakbaru · 10-22-2007, 02:09 AM

thank god your back ghostdancer. i was beginning to lost hope for a while. the possibility that yahoo block my address did came to mind actually in the beginning. i did however test send and receive my qmail account to various account (actually it was only yahoo.com) without any problem. the problem occur when i came back today to check it. the error was located in my log file in /var/log/qmail/log <-----this is log file for qmail-send. is it possible that after a while, meaning after 2-3 days, yahoo doesnt recognised the address anymore thus suddenly prohibiting my qmail to send to yahoomail account? and like i said, the qmail-send(qmail-send already running) error does sometime show up and keep shutting down and restarting the qmail send service and there only solution that i could find out was to reboot the mail server. although there no guarantee that this problem would not arise when the machine start new. right now, currently, i'm trying to send my qmail account to my yahoo account but to no avail. there is however, the message is still in queue in qmailctl stat.\

right now, all i can say is that my qmail can receive email from other domain but i cannot send any email to others. any solutions ??

ghostdancer · 10-22-2007, 05:03 AM

qmail-send keep dying? How did you start qmail-send? I suppose, if you follow the instructions from lifewithqmail, you should use the inittab right? Can you show me the inittab and the corresponding run script? If possible try capture a few lines before it said restarting, check if there are any helpful information on why it require restarting.

From the URL in the yahoo response (try copy the URL returned from yahoo):

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mai...use/index.html

It seems yahoo decided to block emails from your server. Do you have another mail server? If you have another mail server, you can direct the mail traffic to that mail server and use it to send email.

Did you setup all the proper DNS entries (include the reverse-lookup entry) for your IP address? You may need to setup this in your DNS in order to get it accepted by yahoo.

budakbaru · 10-22-2007, 05:47 AM

the only reference from inittab that i know of following lifewithqmail is for the daemontools package

# When our UPS tells us power has failed, assume we have a few minutes
# of power left. Schedule a shutdown for 2 minutes from now.
# This does, of course, assume you have powerd installed and your
# UPS connected and working correctly.
pf:

owerfail:/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"

# If power was restored before the shutdown kicked in, cancel it.
pr:12345

owerokwait:/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"

# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
x:5

nce:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

SV:123456:respawn:/command/svscanboot <-----this is the noticeble add on......

the run script for qmail send is

#!/bin/sh
exec /var/qmail/rc

my rc file looks like this,

#!/bin/sh

# Using stdout for logging
# Using control/defaultdelivery from qmail-local to deliver messages by default

exec env - PATH="/var/qmail/bin:$PATH" \
qmail-start "`cat /var/qmail/control/defaultdelivery`"

i hope this is script that you ask for. for capturing the lines before starting well i need to have some pointer to do that. i'm dont really know how.
for the time being, this error message keep coming out in the qmail send log file

alert: cannot start: qmail-send is already running

when i ps waux |grep qmail-send, we would see 2 qmail send running synchronously. i have to kill the process which is interfering with qmail send before it can really works..........

p.s thanks again

ghostdancer · 10-22-2007, 08:47 AM

From my ps command, what I see:

Code:

$> ps -elf | grep qmail-send
4 S root      2262  2256  0  75   0 -   353 -      Oct04 ?        00:00:00 supervise qmail-send
4 S qmails    2268  2262  0  78   0 -   397 -      Oct04 ?        00:00:01 qmail-send

I do get two lines of qmail-send, however, one is the supervisor task (that will monitor qmail-send if it went down) and the other is the actual qmail-send. Are you seeing the same as mine or you are seeing two qmail-send task with the same owner as qmails.

Can you show me your /service/, do 'ls -l /service', there should only be one link to qmail-send.

Code:

$> ls -l /service/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Feb 10  2006 qmail-pop3d -> ../var/qmail/supervise/qmail-pop3d/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Mar 14  2003 qmail-send -> /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-send/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Mar 14  2003 qmail-smtpd -> /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpd/

If confirm there is additional qmail-send task and the run files from /service/ looks OK, then somehow, something else is spawning qmail-send.

ghostdancer · 10-22-2007, 09:05 AM

I'll be boarding flight to Korea soon, so may not be not much help from now (until I get connected somewhere in Korea). I suggest look through your start up script and verify there are no repeated commands or duplication of run script. Check again your installation against lifewithqamil guide, there should be some mistake somewhere, we just need dig deeper into the setup to find it.

Don't worry, worst case situation is just delete your entire qmail install and try again. Since you have done it once, it should be much easier the next time.

budakbaru · 10-23-2007, 09:04 AM

everything looks fine, when i did ps -elf | grep qmail-send it comes out like the outcome that you posted. i also didnt find any 'extra' symbolic link in the /service rather than what it should have. question, is there any other command to find all of the symbolic link in linux ? i still believe there is another unidentifed link keep messing with the qmail send.
anyway, thanks. hope you find a way in korea to stay connected always. i heard Korea's bandwidth is the fastest in the world so i think you shouldn't have a problem staying connected. i just hope you have the time to keep posting any good suggestion and ideas to this thread. again, thanks.

ghostdancer · 10-24-2007, 03:28 AM

Well... My trip to Korea is a working trip (not holiday). So I will be spending a lot of my time in doing coding rather than replying to forum. So, even with Internet connection, does not imply I can use it for personal stuff.

Anyway, unless the log file keep showing something else started qmail-send, I think you should be fine.

Try setup your server with a proper DNS entry. Most of the anti-spam software block remote IP that failed DNS reverse-lookup.

Good luck.
ps: Ya, the Internet access is amazingly fast!

budakbaru · 10-24-2007, 09:10 PM

concerning dns, i have some question. currently, for testing qmail, i purchase a working dns. i configure this dns with a dynamic ip to connect to the qmail server. i do believe that the dynamic ip is causing this spam problem. then again, i'm still new on this topic. any theories is welcome. for the real qmail, i was wondering how the relayclient or rather the tcp.smtp file should have. for the real one, it's has it's own lease line, meaning a static ip. should the relayclient command looks like this, or the tcp.smtp relayclient is only for internal ip only ? :-

60.168.152.:allow,RELAYCLIENT="" <----example of a static ip.
:allow

ghostdancer · 10-25-2007, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by budakbaru

concerning dns, i have some question. currently, for testing qmail, i purchase a working dns. i configure this dns with a dynamic ip to connect to the qmail server. i do believe that the dynamic ip is causing this spam problem. then again, i'm still new on this topic. any theories is welcome. for the real qmail, i was wondering how the relayclient or rather the tcp.smtp file should have. for the real one, it's has it's own lease line, meaning a static ip. should the relayclient command looks like this, or the tcp.smtp relayclient is only for internal ip only ? :-

60.168.152.:allow,RELAYCLIENT="" <----example of a static ip.

:allow

AFAIK, dynamic DNS only let the system do hostname->IP resolution. For IP->hostname resolution, this can't be done by dynamic DNS.

From my experience, may anti-spam software try to filter out those emails where the sender IP address cannot be resolved to a hostname. Or the hostname during the "HELO" or "EHLO" SMTP handshaking does not match the IP->hostname mapping.

From my understanding, dynamic DNS is usually useful for incoming connection for home base dial up or ADSL access. Since such access means the IP usually will change whenever connect to Internet. Thus, by using a fix hostname, it will be easier for remote access. For example, if hosting a web page or home base file storage system (where you can download/upload your files whenever you are oversea).

For email server, it maybe tricky, since the important issue here is for outgoing traffic. If the remote mail server require the sender IP->hostname resolution is valid and your ISP does not setup this for you, or the IP->hostname resolution shows, your mail server is from a dial-up system, then there maybe a situation where remote will block your email.

My suggestion, try route your outgoing email to your ISP mail server (most ISP I know, provide SMTP mail service). However, if your ISP requires SASL, then that will be even trickier to resolve...

By the way, I am not a spammer, I notice such problem because I manage a few mail servers (all qmail), and I wrote a simple mail server (for outgoing traffic only) in Perl. These are the stuff I notice from my experiences.

"RELAYCLIENT" is for you to setup SMTP relay permission for remote to send email via your system. It should not be relevant for your case, unless you want to let other server (not just yours) to send email using your mail server.

budakbaru · 10-27-2007, 12:48 AM

how can we resolve the issue of slow connectivity. when i try to send to my yahoo account, in the log it stated that my greeting fail and therefore can not send. the problem is, the mail is still queuing although the log say otherwise. how do i resolve this problem?? everytime i delete the queue message, the qmail-send will keep restarting itself with the error message

alert: cannot start: qmail-send is already running

this problem keep popping up. any ideas ??

ghostdancer · 10-28-2007, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by budakbaru

how can we resolve the issue of slow connectivity. when i try to send to my yahoo account, in the log it stated that my greeting fail and therefore can not send. the problem is, the mail is still queuing although the log say otherwise. how do i resolve this problem?? everytime i delete the queue message, the qmail-send will keep restarting itself with the error message

alert: cannot start: qmail-send is already running

this problem keep popping up. any ideas ??

You delete a message from the queue? How did you delete it?

You are not suppose to remove files in the qmail/queue/ manually. It will cause problem to the system. Don't do it unless you know what you doing.

Unless, you are thinking installing some traffic shaper to control how much bandwidth to allocate for different network protocol, otherwise, bandwidth limitation can only resolve by increasing your bandwidth. However, I don't think you should too worry about this, I got this kind of messages in my logs as well. Sometime, this maybe more related with remote server, where it is too busy too receive the email. qmail will resend the email later. So, don't worry.

budakbaru · 10-29-2007, 03:12 AM

i delete it using webmin. i found out that this qmail-send error problem keep on recurring because, like you said, it keep trying to send the message even though we deleted it. now, i notice a new problem that i havent suspect before. my qmail pop3d log file arent generating any files or log like the other logs file suppose to be. i double check everything and i think i have follow every guideline possible. the qmailctl stat shows that all of my services are running fine and above 0 or 1 second. any suggestion ?? and one more thing, how do i want to minimize the length or discard old log messages ? it keeps adding new lines to the existing one making the log file longer everyday thus, making it inefficient to troubleshoot the system. any suggestion??