Re: Postfix prolem (Is it ok to mix testing/stable apt sources?)
> I have both testing and stable sources in my sources.list. I think I
> saw once on this list that it is OK and such mix is supported.
I would hope it is, since testing does not yet seem to contain a
complete distribution and having both "stable" and "testing"
simultaneously seems to be the only way to get a "testing" box working
well.
> I've just run dselect and it upgraded postfix with package from
> stable. However it doesn't want to install properly - on installation
> it runs newaliases which dies with:
>
> postalias: fatal: open database /etc/aliases.db: Invalid argument
I've had this problem too, the version that "apt-get upgrade" fetched
for me was "0.0.19991231pl11-1", dated 1-Dec-2000. Why such an old
package has only now made it into testing I'm not sure.
In a google search I just did, the error message quoted above crops up
quite often on postfix-related lists, suggesting it's a common problem.
The solution cited always seems to be to run "newaliases", which doesn't
help us here because that command just gives the above error again. I
haven't seen an explanation for *why* the message appears, nor why
running "newaliases" should fix it.
The following changelog.Debian.gz entry seems the only one related to
this problem:
=====
postfix (0.0.19991231pl11-1) stable; urgency=high
* Upstream fixes (see /usr/share/doc/postfix/RELEASE_NOTES),
* including:
- Postfix must no longer use DB 1.85 compatibility mode, because that
mode loses the file lock while building a table, so that table
lookups fail and MAIL IS LOST. Closes: #78812.
[...]
-- LaMont Jones <lamont@debian.org> Fri, 1 Dec 2000 08:48:13 -0700
=====
This in turn is referring to this entry from the changelog.gz:
=====
20001026
Horror: postmap and postalias (newaliases) silently lose
the file lock while building a lookup table with Berkeley
DB 2.x and later on Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, and UNIXWARE.
The result is that table lookups fail while the table is
being built, so that mail is lost. In order to avoid this
misbehavior one has to use an undocumented feature that is
NOT available with the DB1.85 compatibility interface.
Therefore, Postfix now supports three Berkeley DB programming
interfaces of increasing complexity. File: util/dict_db.c.
=====
Would the lack of DB 1.85 compatibility be a problem on machines that
use DB 2.x, and more recently DB 3.x, as the testing tree now seems to
do? Could it be that the recent addition of DB 3.x to the mix (my box
now has libdb2 2.7.7-7 and libdb3 3.2.9-5) is combining here to cause
this problem? Any help on this confusing state of affairs is
appreciated.
Please Bcc: me on replies as my subscription to the list doesn't seem to
be working.
--
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_o__) BIGNOSE
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