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MBMarduk
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 80
Location: NL
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 Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 12:41 pm Post subject: Sendmail runs every hour: NOT installed, NOT CRONed, WTF? |
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I got this freakish error happening every hour or so I think.
I spend most of my time in X so every now and then when I CTRL+ALT+F1 into a console I see my screen full of the message:
| Quote: | | sendmail: Cannot open mail:25 |
Sometimes I actually NOTICE it's running 'cuz my mouse pointer starts hiccupping all over the screen.
I then run a 'ps aux' just to see among other things a "/bin/sh" running
"/usr/sbin/sendmail"
Thing is: I've never installed Sendmail
A quick 'emerge -S mail' shows that only mailbase and fetchmail are installed.
Another 'grep -r 'sendmail' /var/log/portage' shows this:
| Quote: |
root@blackheart Stuff # grep -r 'sendmail' /var/log/portage/
/var/log/portage/1330-fetchmail-6.2.3.log:checking for sendmail... /usr/sbin/sendmail
/var/log/portage/1332-fetchmail-6.2.3.log:checking for sendmail... /usr/sbin/sendmail
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(Yeah I emerged it twice, dumbo.)
So basically that /usr/sbin/sendmail was there beforehand and I've no idea where from.
Oh yeah 'grep -r 'sendmail' /etc' returns NOTHING!
But the weirdest thing is that I only have 3 cronscripts:
| Quote: |
root@blackheart Stuff # ls -las /etc/cron.hourly/
total 12
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 20 05:54 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 57 root root 4096 Sep 29 15:41 ..
0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 16 19:33 .keep
4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22 Sep 19 05:17 portage_sync
root@blackheart Stuff # ls -las /etc/cron.daily/
total 16
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 20 05:54 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 57 root root 4096 Sep 29 15:41 ..
0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 16 19:33 .keep
4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 155 Jul 28 03:39 makewhatis.cron
4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 142 Jul 28 04:09 slocate
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...and no fetchmail either, even 'ps aux' shows no fetchmail (which you'd THINK calls sendmail)
Anyone have an idea how to find out what's summoning sendmail every time??? |
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Unlucky_Alf
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
Posts: 92
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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| I've seen that too, but I don't know how often it happens. Could you post output of |
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MBMarduk
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 80
Location: NL
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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Sure,
| Quote: | root@blackheart Stuff # lsattr /etc/shadow
------------- /etc/shadow
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funkmankey
Guru
Joined: 06 Mar 2003
Posts: 304
Location: CH
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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some mail programs (e.g. exim) install a sendmail symbolic link, just 'cos there are other old programs out there that expect to find /usr/{lib,sbin}/sendmail.
my guess is that you have ssmtp installed, which also creates a sendmail link...
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I've got the brain, I'm insane, you can't stop the power |
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Malakin
Veteran
Joined: 14 Apr 2002
Posts: 1692
Location: Victoria BC Canada
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| Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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| I've had this same problem for a long time and have always ignored it. I just unmerged ssmtp, hoping this will fix it. |
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zhenlin
Veteran
Joined: 09 Nov 2002
Posts: 1361
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 7:36 am Post subject: |
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Ah, you're mistaken.
Cron attempts to run sendmail everytime for each job it runs (if it outputs to stdout)
Solution is to tell cron to not send mail at all. man 5 crontab. |
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MBMarduk
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 80
Location: NL
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 9:02 am Post subject: |
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| Say what? Did you even READ what I posted (about my cronscripts etc.)? |
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Dinini
Apprentice
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Posts: 236
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 9:32 am Post subject: |
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I DID read what you wrote and what you are replying to. The previous post made perfect sense and might pinpoint the source of your trouble.
Please try and run /etc/cron.hourly/portage_sync from the command line. If you see ANY output then cron would try to send you mail. Cron defaults to sending the owner of the crontab mail if any output occurs unless MAILTO is defined and set as empty (MAILTO="").
To find out what package installed /usr/sbin/sendmail try
| Code: | | grep -R /var/db/pkg/ -e "/usr/sbin/sendmail" |
Ok I'm terrible at grep but that should work.
The files installed by packages are listed in /var/dg/pkg/{package type}/{package name}/CONTENTS
There is undoubtedly a nice utility to give you the same information (I would have hoped it was an emerge parameter) but I haven't managed to find it yet. |
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funkmankey
Guru
Joined: 06 Mar 2003
Posts: 304
Location: CH
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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not quite emerge, but close...
| Code: | %etcat belongs "/usr/sbin/sendmail"
Searching for /usr/sbin/sendmail in * ...
net-mail/ssmtp-2.48 |
agreed, zhenlin is exactly right. any cronjob that generates output will result in mail being sent to root by default.
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MBMarduk
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 80
Location: NL
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 2:24 pm Post subject: |
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Hi people.
Ok 2 people said zhenlin got it right, but for the life of me his 3 sentences are cryptic as hell (sorry zhen  ) for someone like me who doesn't yet grasp the intricacies of CRON (5).
So basically the problem lays with CRON sending mail by default, right?
I'll look into it, thanx. |
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funkmankey
Guru
Joined: 06 Mar 2003
Posts: 304
Location: CH
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| Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Code: | %man 5 crontab
(then search about mail, e.g. /MAIL)
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or you might find info to be easier to use than man (hmm, I don't really use info a lot, it seems to default to 1...anyone know how to specify 3, 5, etc.?)
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I've got the brain, I'm insane, you can't stop the power |
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Dinini
Apprentice
Joined: 11 Jun 2003
Posts: 236
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| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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| funkmankey wrote: | | %etcat belongs "/usr/sbin/sendmail" |
Thank you so much!
| funkmankey wrote: | | or you might find info to be easier to use than man (hmm, I don't really use info a lot, it seems to default to 1...anyone know how to specify 3, 5, etc.?) |
*shudder* I hate info, then again I hate emacs so there's a theme here. 
Info defaults to the lowest lvl man page available, you get to the other pages using the SEE ALSO listings (which serve as links). Since various man pages aren't accessed as nodes or menu items I don't see a way to directly access them through the command line. [Patiently waiting for someone to prove me wrong.]
If you like X, there's always tkman, yelp (gnome), konquerer (man:commandname) or the KDE Help Center. |
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funkmankey
Guru
Joined: 06 Mar 2003
Posts: 304
Location: CH
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| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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that's funny, I love emacs but I really can't stand info!
yeah, etcat has been the best even back before it became part of gentoolkit. although now we're finally seeing features like
which provide similar functionality to
...but in this example etcat still gives you slightly more info: it will tell you not only what USE flags the package has, but if the package is already installed it will tell you which ones were turned on when it was installed. brilliant...
</derail>
er, so, how's cron treating you these days Marduk?
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ebrostig
Bodhisattva
Joined: 20 Jul 2002
Posts: 3152
Location: Orlando, Fl
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| Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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Moving to Networking and Security since all mail related issues belongs there.
Moved from OTG.
Erik
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