aem@ibiza.cs.miami.edu (a.e.mossberg) (09/07/89)
I'm having a big mailer problem on a Microvax II running Ultrix 3.0.
Our binmail (-rwsr-sr-x 1 root mail 62464 Oct 19 1988 /usr/bin/mail)
is seemingly randomly screwing up mail. Most of the mail is addressed to
aliases on our system, and the error that occurs is "Unknown Mailer Error 255"
For example, I have an alias "seclist" on the system which is aliased right
now to "aem". (This is where the security digest is addressed to on mthvax).
If, as 'daemon', I mail to seclist, I get two maa* files in tmp, with no mail
delivery. The first maa* file is simply the mail. The second is what the
mailer-daemon attempts to unsuccesfully deliver back.
E.g.:
Script started on Thu Sep 7 11:13:45 1989
$ whoami
daemon
$ which mail
/usr/ucb/mail
$ grep seclist /etc/aliases
seclist: aem
owner-seclist: aem
$ mail seclist
Subject: test
test
Cc:
$ mailq
Mail Queue (1 request)
--QID-- --Size-- -----Q-Time----- ------------Sender/Recipient------------
AA04425* 13 Thu Sep 7 11:14 daemon
aem
$ mailq
Mail queue is empty
$ ls /tmp
Ex01528 Rx01528 maa4429 maa4433 t3265 typescript
$ cat maa4429
From daemon Thu Sep 7 11:14:43 1989
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 89 11:14:39 EDT
From: daemon (Mr Background)
To: seclist
Subject: test
test
test
$ cat maa4433
From daemon Thu Sep 7 11:14:45 1989
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 89 11:14:39 EDT
From: MAILER-DAEMON (Mail Delivery Subsystem)
Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255
To: owner-seclist
----- Transcript of session follows -----
554 aem... unknown mailer error 255
----- Unsent message follows -----
Received: by mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU (5.57/890828aem)
id AA04425; Thu, 7 Sep 89 11:14:39 EDT
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 89 11:14:39 EDT
From: daemon (Mr Background)
To: seclist
Subject: test
test
test
$ tail /usr/spool/mqueue/syslog
Sep 7 11:14:40 localhost: 4425 sendmail: AA04425: message-id=<8909071514.AA04425@mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU>
Sep 7 11:14:40 localhost: 4425 sendmail: AA04425: from=daemon, size=37, class=0
Sep 7 11:14:43 localhost: 4427 sendmail: AA04425: to=aem, delay=00:00:04, stat=unknown mailer error 255
Sep 7 11:14:44 localhost: 4427 sendmail: AA04427: message-id=<8909071514.AA04427@mthvax.CS.Miami.EDU>
Sep 7 11:14:44 localhost: 4427 sendmail: AA04427: from=MAILER-DAEMON, size=0, class=0
Sep 7 11:14:46 localhost: 4432 sendmail: AA04427: to=aem, delay=00:00:03, stat=unknown mailer error 255
$ ^D
script done on Thu Sep 7 11:15:26 1989
Now, I'm baffled. The mailer is properly set up in sendmail.cf, and everything
appears to be equivelent to another microvax here with ultrix 3.0 which works
without any problem whatsoever.
Anyone experience this? Any ideas?
thanks,
aem
a.e.mossberg / aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu / aem@umiami.BITNET / Pahayokee Bioregion
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of
importance, it lasts so short a time. - Samuel Johnsonsteve@fnord.umiacs.umd.edu (Steve D. Miller) (09/08/89)
Let's ask a silly question here: do you have world read permissions turned off on /dev/kmem? I had a similar problem when closing up kmem permissions, and it turns out that Ultrix does some sort of really strange (and broken) locking on mail files... and the locking is load-dependent. If it can't get at /dev/kmem, /bin/mail loses. There's a whole pile of MH commands that have similar problems. -Steve Spoken: Steve Miller Domain: steve@umiacs.umd.edu UUCP: uunet!mimsy!steve Phone: +1-301-454-1808 USPS: UMIACS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
aem@ibiza.cs.miami.edu (a.e.mossberg) (09/13/89)
steve@fnord.umiacs.umd.edu (Steve D. Miller) writes: > Let's ask a silly question here: do you have world read permissions >turned off on /dev/kmem? [...] That was it. Thanks! aem a.e.mossberg / aem@mthvax.cs.miami.edu / aem@umiami.BITNET / Pahayokee Bioregion If you crumple your money into little balls, it will never stick together. - David Byrne