Mail Problems / Postfix errors : "postfix/postdrop[2639]: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/822547.2639: Permission denied"

Hi All:

I'm not getting email alerts from OMV.

I see some version of this error in my syslog: "postfix/postdrop[2639]: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/822547.2639: Permission denied"

This is logged about 3 times a minute.

I've checked what i can find and the permissions look reasonable to me, but I'm also not sure what they should be.

This is what I have for the maildrop file in /var/spool/postfix:
drwx--s--T 2 postfix postdrop 4.0K Dec 25 01:02 maildrop

(I see the directory was touched early in the morning on the 25th. I'm not recalling any significant events on Dec 25. I was doing Dec 25 things, which didn't include restarting or reconfiguring OMV or doing configs that I recall. That date could be a red herring, or maybe a jolly old elf was bored after eating his cookies. These days you get config problems on your OMV NAS instead of coal in your stocking if you're on the naughty list? HaHa)

One more thing, I'm using folder2ram so this is a virtual filesystem in ram. But the permisions are in sync near as I can tell with the physical store that backsup the ram data.

Any tips to fix this?

Cheers,
Steve

Can anyone suggest what the permissions should be in /var/spool/postfix should be? Seems these permissions problems are causing an issue for me to receive email alerts among other things. (I can't log in to the webadmin at the moment either ... think that is a permissions problem as well but not sure if it's this directory or another that's having a problem there.)

Thank you, gderf.

I was unclear in my request. /var/spool/postfix is owned by root in group root on my system too. How should the permissions for all the files in the tree below be set:

I have this;
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root 400 Sep 23 19:20 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 160 Sep 23 19:20 ..
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Jan 8 01:05 active
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Sep 23 19:20 bounce
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Sep 23 19:20 corrupt
drwx------ 11 postfix root 220 Sep 23 19:20 defer
drwx------ 11 postfix root 220 Sep 23 19:20 deferred
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 100 Jan 5 15:08 dev
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 180 Jan 5 15:08 etc
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Sep 23 19:20 flush
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Sep 23 19:20 hold
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Jan 8 01:05 incoming
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 60 Sep 23 19:20 lib
drwx--s--T 2 postfix postdrop 40 Jan 8 01:05 maildrop
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 180 Sep 23 19:20 pid
drwx------ 2 postfix root 420 Jan 5 15:08 private
drwx--s--- 2 postfix postdrop 140 Jan 5 15:08 public
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Sep 23 19:20 saved
drwx------ 2 postfix root 40 Sep 23 19:20 trace
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 60 Sep 23 19:20 usr

I think those are correct.

"postfix check" gives errors if I change maildrop to be owned by root. Since the postfix daemon is running as the postfix user and the command runs suid these permissions make sense to me. But I still get a constant stream of "postfix/postdrop[2639]: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/822547.2639: Permission denied" in syslog. And mail is not working, Or maybe it's not just permissions problem. Looking for help to resolve this.

Cheers,
Steve

I fixed something.

I deleted /var/spool/postfix/maildrop
after the system logged a directory not found error, postfix recreated the missing directory with different default permissions than what it had.

I now have (under /var/spool/postfix):
drwx-wx--- 2 postfix postdrop 40 Jan 8 18:06 maildrop

Previously the permissions on maildrop were:
drwx--s--T 2 postfix postdrop 40 Jan 8 01:05 maildrop

Don't know why that was, but that was what was broken I guess.

Email works. Also login to the web gui works again. It failed while email was failing because it is sending an email anytime someone logs in. When postfix failed on the mail send, the login failed. Uggh. But I guess that's expected.

Since I'm using folder2ram I removed maildrop referenced on the actual SSD store, and copied /var/spool/postfix/maildrop to /var/folder2ram/spool/postfix so that the directory on the backing store would have the same permission as the file in ram. At least I think that would be the effect.

Not sure what caused, or how I caused, this problem to manifest itself. But the problem was there and now it's gone.

Cheers,
Steve