Power failed - Qmail corrupted. What next? [closed]

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Well, other knocks at my inexperience with file systems aside, I am trying to get the email services back online.

Running qmail, vpopmail, courrier-imap.

This morning when power failed, after the file system check all email services were rejected. No user accoutns showed in qmail admin, and all attempts to connect are rejected.

All the data in /var/vpopmail/domains/ iseems to be intact, valias still lists proper aliases.

I've done a search on recovering the system, but I can't find any good documents... where do I start?
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TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

I re-emerged qmail, vpopmail, courior-imap and that fixed the email accoutns not showing up...

But no one can log in in imap or pop3.. Unknown if outgoing mail is down... Any helps where to go?
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Rüpel · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:26 am Post subject:

are the ports open? (netstat -tuanp)
what do the logfiles tell you?
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TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

The ports are still open...

/var/log/qmail/qmail-smtpd/current shows that incomming emails are still being processed properly..
I don't know where to find a more detailed log for pop3/imap, /var/log/messages has lines like these:

clintar · n00b Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 30

If you are using mysql for keeping the vpopmail login info, which would be the case if you followed the howto, then you should probably try to repair your mysql tables. Not sure where to look to tell which would be corrupted at the moment, but you would run as root

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Checking the database was on my list of initial things I did... Although I hadn't thought of rebuilding the tables since the browsing of them worked okay.

Rebuilt all the tables.. also recompiled checkpassword cmd5checkpw queue-fix dot-forward and daemontools, and still don't have any luck... Arrrgh...
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#define struct union /* A Real space saver!

*/

clintar · n00b Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 30

Make sure to recompile courier-authlib after vpopmail gets updated, FYI. Don't know if that falls in line with what you're seeing, but it's bitten me a few times.

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Tried rebuilding courier-authlib a couple times... tried it again for good measure! (Trying everything I can!)

I tested if outgoing email is functioning, and it isn't. I can send a email to locations ON the server, but a valid recipient from the email server gets the following error:

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Okay, NOW I've found a meaningful error and am not shooting as much in the dark.

I modified /etc/courier/authlib/authdaemonrc and changed debug login to 1 instead of zero,
Tried to collect a message and found this in /var/log/messages:

clintar · n00b Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 30

I'd do the check in code listing 3.3 and see what that returns. Maybe it's a permissions issue that needs to be fixed as in listing 3.2. I'd at least go over the vpopmail/auth stuff in that howto to make sure things look right.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/qmail-howto.xml

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Gone over everything in the permissions, and it's working as far as the command line goes. The permissions list okay, the text-hit to try and log in logs a successful log in... but it's still not working.

This might be related, but outgoing email no longer functions as well. It's telling clients that the recipient is invalid or something...
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#define struct union /* A Real space saver!

*/

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Is there any way I can find out what modules authdeamon is using? that might give me some clue where to look for more info. I'm suspecting a config file is damaged somewhere, as I've recompiled as much as I can think of.. I still can't figure out what I'm missing.
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#define struct union /* A Real space saver!

*/

kands · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:13 pm Post subject:

I've had systems go down like yours and it can range from no problem to disasterous depending what is happening on the system when it goes down. Have you done any filesystem integrity checks? You may want to do that before you proceed to ensure that nothing is wrong at a low level. This can often detect corrupt files etc.
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clintar · n00b Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 30

That howto goes over the courier-authdaemon config files and what goes in them. Check those.

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

I found a problem hidden away in /etc/courier/authlib/authdaemonrc ...

So now all the users are able to log in and collect their old emails that have been building up. But in that same stroke, I think I broke something else. Now ALL incomming emails are bounced saying no such mail box, and no one can send outgoing mail. The outgoing messages give this error (On pop3, Imap gives no error):

clintar · n00b Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 30

First thing I'd check is rcpthosts in /var/qmail/control.

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Checking /var/qmail/control for anything goofy in rcpthosts, I noticed some extra .lock files including rcpthosts.lock.

I moved them to a temp-trash folder and it's now accepting email connections and processing emails. But EVERYTHING is being bounced. Like there's no email accoutns at all... qmailadmin shows all accoutns and forwards intact.

The code at 2.5 on http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/qmail-howto.xml for using qmail-inject does work... but incomming emails all get bounced.

Although it gets even messier if the email is from one user to another user on the same server...

Here's from /var/log/qmail-send/current:

clintar · n00b Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 30

Check in /var/qmail/control/conf-smtpd
for
QMAIL_SMTP_CHECKPASSWORD="/var/vpopmail/bin/vchkpw"

and also check section 2.6 and 2.7 for what goes in those files. One note though, in 2.7, i had to have domain.com instead of mail.domain.com in rcpthosts for it to work for us.

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Hmmm...

Since I have a liscense to VMware, I decided to try installing qmail on a guest copy of Gentoo (A whole other set of issues on that, but I found my way through them.), and figure out when it's working with the default configuration, compare config files and see what's broken.

Good plan... but when I finally finished getting qmail installed, the guest-OS is doing the exact same thing... Refusing to deliver mail to valid mail boxes.

It IS delivering mail to users with a valid .maildir in their home directory, but NOT for users who have accoutns in vpopmail/qmailadmin...

Both versions are doing exactly the same thing now so my original issue of the server corruption has I think been solved.

Now I have to figure out why it's not working. Eeeek! Hopefully there's something about this in another post...
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#define struct union /* A Real space saver!

*/

PaveQ · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 9:04 am Post subject:

UPS, backup?

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Wasn't before... there is now you bet ya!
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#define struct union /* A Real space saver!

*/

TheNewb · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 183

Since the original post was about solving corruption... and now the problem is a vpop mail failure on a default installation... I'm going to consider this thread closed and start a new one for the new issue...
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#define struct union /* A Real space saver!

*/