Ron Johnson wrote:
Well... messed up as in the mail system is completely gronked. Tried removing and purging every vestige of exim, postfix, sendmail, then reinstalled postfix. Can't get postfix to start. Tried purging postfix and getting exim to run - no dice. I think, somewhere along the way, I messed up a dependency.What do /var/log/mail.err and /var/log/mail.log look like after the failed attempt?
mail.err - lots of this (after trying to send a message with mail):Sep 3 19:58:15 server2 sendmail[10271]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 268: service "smtp" unknown: No such file or directory Sep 3 19:58:16 server2 sm-mta[10367]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 268: service "smtp" unknown: No such file or directory Sep 3 20:07:24 server2 postfix/smtp[11050]: fatal: unknown service: smtp/tcp Sep 3 20:08:37 server2 postfix/smtp[11310]: fatal: unknown service: smtp/tcp Sep 3 20:15:30 server2 postfix/master[11300]: fatal: getaddrinfo: Servname not supported for ai_socktype Sep 3 20:17:28 server2 postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is not running Sep 3 20:25:43 server2 postfix/master[2760]: fatal: getaddrinfo: Servname not supported for ai_socktype Sep 3 20:27:53 server2 postfix/master[2935]: fatal: getaddrinfo: Servname not supported for ai_socktype Sep 3 20:28:11 server2 postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is not running
basically the same messages in mail.info and mail.log
Actually, a horked MTA is what my first guess was when I read "messed up"... :)
funny thing, huh:-(I started out by trying to install webmin, with it's server monitoring module. Turns out that it requires the webmin-sendmail module, which in turn requires sendmail itself. Seems like the monitoring module picks up the location of the sendmail executable from the webmin-sendmail module's config file. Pretty broken, sigh.... All I wanted to do was set up a quick and dirty monitor to watch my main machine and email my cell phone if something goes down.
I'd install smail and slocate and *purge* any remaining exim & postfix packages. After rebuilding the locate DB, manually rm any remaining files.
Before I try this, do the log entries give you and more focused ideas? Thanks very much! Miles