Re: Fetchmail problem: connection to localhost refused

[John <johnrchamplin@columbus.rr.com>]

--- On Sun, 3/22/09, Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian@icfo.es> wrote:

>> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 19:37:45
> > -0700, johnrchamplin AT columbus DOT rr DOT com wrote:
> > 
> > Fetchmail, for reasons I can't figure out, has started refusing to
> > download mail. ...
> > )..fetchmail: connection to localhost:smtp  [127.0.0.1/25] failed: Connection
> >  refused.
> > ...
> > fetchmail: Query status=10 (SMTP)
> 
> Check the status of port 25 on that machine, ...
> # lsof -i :25
> # netstat -plant | grep ':25 '
> tcp        0      0

Thanks, Florian.

Neither command produces any return, because (as I discovered after I sent my first note), exim 4 is not running and refuses to start:

root@/usr/sbin# /etc/init.d/exim4 start
Starting MTA:/sbin/start-stop-daemon: Unable to chdir() to '/usr/sbin' (No such file or directory)

exim4 itself is up-to-date (Installed: 4.69-9, with all exim4 files unchanged since 2008-10-05). Could the problem be with the /sbin/start-stop-daemon, a part of dpkg (1.14.25, installed 2009-02-07)? 

rkhunter just wrote, "Please inspect this machine, because it may be infected." Evidently properties of /usr/bin/ldd have changed, and I did indeed upgrade libc6 (currently 2.9-6) just before the trouble appeared. 

Would you recommend reinstalling dpkg and/or libc6? Or is it time for drastic measures?