SMTP woes

[DarkHorizon]

Hello all,

My series of woes began with a problem of new users not receiving sign-up mail from the forums I run on my website.

After some twiddling of various settings (e.g. switching from smtp to php mail() for delivery), I decided that perhaps the best course of action would be to properly install a mail server.

I walked through the install tutorial at the following link:
http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect_setup_ubuntu_6.06_p5

At the end, everything seemed to run fine (except for the following output which, when compared to the original site, simply lacks the secure authentication reponses from the SMTP server):

root@zeus:~# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 localhost ESMTP Exim 4.60 Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:24:19 -0400
ehlo localhost
250-localhost Hello localhost [127.0.0.1]
250-SIZE 52428800
250-PIPELINING
250 HELP
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
root@zeus:~#


Now, when I try a simple mail-send from the command-line (using `mail` from the mailx package), I get the following response:

root@zeus:~# mail my@email.address
Subject: test
test
.
Cc: .
postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory
root@zeus:~#


This results in the following error:

postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory

I've searched high and low for some inkling as to the reason for this error message, via google, forums here, and various other archives, but I cannot for the life of me find a resolution.

Incidentally, if I can get the php mail working, I can forget about the SMTP server, as it is not totally necessary :)

Any help is appreciated!

[mlind]

Is the local mail pickup daemon running ?

ps -C pickup


I'm not familiar with that guide, but I have postfix mail system up and running.

[DarkHorizon]

Hello,

Thanks for your response.

That command results in:

root@zeus:~# ps -C pickup
PID TTY TIME CMD
root@zeus:~#


So to answer your question, 'pickup' is not running.

Thanks for your input! I'll see if I can find its host package.

[mlind]

Hello,

Thanks for your response.

That command results in:



So to answer your question, 'pickup' is not running.

Thanks for your input! I'll see if I can find its host package.

Does your /etc/postfix/master.cf contain

pickup fifo n - - 60 1 pickup


pickup is installed along with postfix

[davebgimp]

I have the same problem. Postfix is installed, but pickup is not running. My master.cf does contain the entry:

pickup fifo n - - 60 1 pickup

[deuce868]

Same issue here with edgy install. I show the packaged installed. I have removed and reinstalled postfix.

Searching for pickup yields these results:
/usr/lib/postfix/pickup
/usr/share/man/man8/pickup.8postfix.gz

[deuce868]

Some more info, I removed postfix with --purge and then reinstalled it.

On the reinstall I get this:
Setting up postfix (2.3.3-1) ...
Adding group `postfix' (117)...
Done.
Adding system user `postfix' with uid 113...
Adding new user `postfix' (113) with group `postfix'.
Not creating home directory `/var/spool/postfix'.
Creating /etc/postfix/dynamicmaps.cf
Adding tcp map entry to /etc/postfix/dynamicmaps.cf
Adding group `postdrop' (118)...
Done.


Any ideas why the spool directory is not created?

[darrenm]

Edgy with Postfix fine here.

Got the same config as everyone else with pickup

what does ls -alt /usr/lib/postfix/pickup say?

[deuce868]

Ok, one more. I found the cause. When postfix installed it did not stop exim so it was still running. Postfix couldn't start then. Killing the exim proceses and restarting postfix worked.