qmail broke. Mail programs can't send mail.

techiem2

I was updating a few things yesterday, and in the process something apparently broke qmail.
When I try to send mail using Thunderbird or Squirrelmail, I get the following error :

451 unable to exec qq (#4.3.0)

Sending mail using the Compose option under my mailbox in User Mailboxes in the qmail webmin module works.

Any ideas?

I'm not sure which logs to look at to see what's broke.
And googling isn't helping much.
I generally see something about increasing the softlimit.
Mine is set to 80MB cuz I was having issues related to it being too small before.

Thanks.

TechieM2

Ryle · Apprentice Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 204

So its broke in that you cannot send mail? What about receiving? I assume that if you can't send mail you are using your local qmail as your smtp. If you do a ps -Af | grep tcpserver do you see anything listening on the smtp port (25)?

techiem2 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 5:55 pm Post subject:

Here's the output.
--------------------
techiem2 files # ps -Af | grep tcpserver

qmaild 27574 27568 0 12:45 pts/2 00:00:00 /usr/bin/tcpserver -p -v -R -x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb -c 20 -u 201 -g 200 0.0.0.0 smtp /usr/bin/fixcrio /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd

root 27585 27576 0 12:45 pts/2 00:00:00 /usr/bin/tcpserver -p -v -x /etc/tcp.pop3.cdb -c 20 0.0.0.0 pop3 /var/qmail/bin/qmail-popup techiem2.resnet /bin/checkpassword /var/qmail/bin/qmail-pop3d .maildir

root 14195 13327 0 13:47 pts/2 00:00:00 grep tcpserver
--------------------------
Correct.
when using the send-mail thing in the webmin modules, it works.
The mail goes to the recipient (local or remote) fine.
Apparently that module just uses qmail-send and not qmail-smtp.

Here's the lines from the /var/log/qmail/qmail-smtpd/current logfile when I tried to send using a normal mail client.

------------------------------
@400000004141e99139a1613c tcpserver: status: 1/20
@400000004141e99139ab3cac tcpserver: pid 17798 from 192.168.100.11
@400000004141e99139ebeb44 tcpserver: ok 17798 techiem2.resnet:192.168.100.10:25 room.resnet:192.168.100.11::41293
@400000004141e9932e44fe5c tcpserver: end 17798 status 256
@400000004141e9932e454894 tcpserver: status: 0/20
-----------------------------------------

Here's the output of a quick test script I found that connects and sends a test message:

----------------------
techiem2 files # ./test localhost
root@techiem2.resnet
220 techiem2.resnet ESMTP
250 techiem2.resnet
250 ok
250 ok
354 go ahead
451 unable to exec qq (#4.3.0)
techiem2 files #
---------------------------

Thanks.

Ryle · Apprentice Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 204

What types of things did you install that could have caused this? Were you trying to incorporate anti-spam/anti-virus scanning?

techiem2 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:20 pm Post subject:

They were already incorporated and working fine.

I was updating rsync, which needed to update a few other libs and such.
I don't recall anything new installing, but I wasn't watching that closely.
The only thing I can think of is that one of the updates changed some permissions on something that qmail-smtpd uses or something like that.

I'm gonna finish my updating and reboot the server to see if that helps (this was a major update run). Though I'm not holding my breath.
I suppose I could backup my configs and reinstall qmail if nobody has any ideas that work.
Though that would be a pain.

Ryle · Apprentice Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 204

Well, the reason I ask is that when I installed clamav and spamassassin I ran into a similar problem. I was able to send mail locally but could not send from an outside client. I think the problem ended up being a permissions problem. There were seperate user accounts for each of the qmail, clamav, spamassassin, and qmail-scanner programs. I believe the solution for me was to make the /var/spool/qmailscan writable by the qscand user. I would look through your qmail related directories and see if anything got chowned back to root.

techiem2 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:27 pm Post subject:

I don't see anything suspicious.

techiem2 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:02 pm Post subject:

Ok.
I fixed it.
I did a re-emerge of qmail and qmail-scanner.
Had to tweak a couple settings, but it looks good now (crosses fingers).
My mail sent anyhow.
hehe.
Must have been a permissions thing or a file got messed up or something.

radulucian · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 1:22 am Post subject:

could you please check if you are now running on
perl-5.8.4-r1 with qmail-scanner-1.23-r3
and if yes, could you document exactly what did you do to solve the problems?

also, are you using spamassassin and clamd with your installation? did you had to tweak some permissions for them as well ? what exactly?

hope you can help.

Spooky Ghost · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 11:47 am Post subject:

I had this problem too and is because of qmail-scanners dependency on sperl/suidperl. I've got some other mail scripts that need this too so I fixed my problem by deleting the two lines from the perl ebuild that rm suid/sperl and remerged. Everything working again straight away...