Re: odd internal mail failure
On Sun 21 Feb 2016 at 14:27:01 (-0500), Harry Putnam wrote:
> On a recently installed jessie OS I've found an odd situation
> happing with the internal mail.
>
> root is getting a message from root. At least that is what appears in
> >From and To.
>
> However the message is showing up in users directory as a file named `$'.
> Here is the header:
>
> From root@d.local.lan Sun Feb 21 07:35:07 2016
> Return-path: <root@d.local.lan>
> Envelope-to: root@d.local.lan
That's a lot of domainname; do you need it? I don't.
> Delivery-date: Sun, 21 Feb 2016 07:35:07 -0500
> Received: from root by d2.local.lan with local (Exim 4.84)
> (envelope-from <root@d.local.lan>)
> id 1aXTEB-0008C5-5J
> for root@d.local.lan; Sun, 21 Feb 2016 07:35:07 -0500
> Subject: exim paniclog on d2.local.lan has non-zero size
> To: root@d.local.lan
> Message-Id: <E1aXTEB-0008C5-5J@d2.local.lan>
> From: root <root@d.local.lan>
> Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2016 07:35:07 -0500
>
> As you see the hostname is shown as "d" and in fact that was the hosts
> name up until several days ago.... so, several days ago the host was
> renamed to d2.
>
> You can also see the correct host name appears in the "Received" header.
> So the old name must be stored somewhere and getting used on the mail.
The obvious candidate is /etc/mailname which I don't see
any reference to your changing.
> The name change was done by editing /etc/hostname to the new name
> editing /etc/hosts to the new name
> and at the command line with # hostname d2.
>
> And yes, I have verified that both are correctly edited.
>
> The host has been rebooted several times since that was done.
> You can see in the header the date is today.
>
> This is not the only message.... I deleted one inadvertently whan I
> saw the Dollar sign as file name the first time.
>
> I've never gotten a filename of "$" before. And haven't noticed any
> hosts having trouble knowning there name before.
>
> Where would the original host name be coming from?
>From my aide-mémoire:
Files under /etc/ with domainname:
.git/logs/ hostname too (from etckeeper?)
hosts several hostnames too
mailname hostname too
ssl/certs/java/cacerts hostname too
Files under /var/lib/ with domainname:
dhcp/dhclient.eth0.leases file looks stale (2½ years old)
wicd/resolv.conf.orig router's IP address too
Files under /etc/ with hostname:
.etckeeper any files I create get archived
.git/description
.git/logs/... domainname too (from etckeeper?)
emacs23/site-start.d/00debian-vars.elc compiled (delete and recreate?)
fstab hostname (comment and mount point)
hostname
hosts domainname too
mailname domainname too
ssh/... and in other hosts' key stores
ssl/certs/java/cacerts domainname too
sudoers.d/...
wicd/wired-settings.conf dhcphostname
wicd/wireless-settings.conf dhcphostname (in each stanza)
Files under /var/lib/ with hostname:
wicd/dhclient.conf
Files under /etc/ with IP address:
hosts
network/interfaces-... ptp configuration
networks localnet only
resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/original default nameserver
apt/apt.conf
wicd/wired-settings.conf router would expect wireless interface alone to give it its normal IP address
Files under /var/lib/ with IP address:
wicd/resolv.conf.orig domainname too
There's probably cruft in there because the file was started in the
20th century back when my machines had routable addresses and
domainnames mattered.
(I'm not attempting to explain the $.)
Cheers,
David.
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