Your message dated Tue, 16 May 2017 16:45:47 +0200
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Re: Bug#844220: exim4: fails to install: user mail was not
found
has caused the Debian Bug report #844220,
regarding exim4: fails to install: user mail was not found
to be marked as done.
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Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
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--
844220: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=844220
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Package: exim4
Version: 4.88~RC4-2
Severity: serious
Justification: package fails to install
Hi,
seen in unstable since today, eg found via
https://jenkins.debian.net/job/chroot-installation_sid_install_education-desktop-mate/734//console
Setting up exim4-config (4.88~RC4-2) ...
Adding system-user for exim (v4)
2016-11-13 05:30:11 Exim configuration error in line 682 of
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp:
user mail was not found
Invalid new configfile /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp, not installing
/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.tmp to /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
dpkg: error processing package exim4-config (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
--
cheers,
Holger
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--- Begin Message ---
Control: reassign -1 exim4
TL;DR: If you encounter this error message, check the permissions of /
Hi!
I am currently playing around a lot with containers and recently I
encountered the issue of exim4-config failing to install with the error
message:
user mail was not found
The sequence of commands I used to reproduce this is roughly
1. tmp="`mktemp --directory`"
2. debootstrap stretch "${tmp}"
3. chroot "${tmp}" passwd -d root
4. systemd-nspawn --boot --directory="${tmp}"
5. Log in as root
6. Run "apt-get install dracut" (dracut pulls in exim4)
After some debugging (exim fortunately has a "-d" command line switch),
I determined what was happening:
1. exim4-config's postinst eventually calls /usr/sbin/update-exim4.conf
2. update-exim4.conf eventually calls"exim4 -C $NEW_CONFIG -bV" to
verify the new config file
3. exim4 drops priviledges to the Debian-exim user
4. exim4 tries to check the configuration file and eventually calls
getpwnam() to check if all users mentioned in the configuration file
actually exist
5. getpwnam() fails with EPERM because the root directory has mode
0700, so /etc/passwd can't be accessed.
With this, my problem was easily solved by using a subdirectory of the
directory returned by mktemp ($tmp/chroot) instead, which debootstrap
could then create with the correct permissions (0755).
As this bug is currently the first result on Google if you search for
the error message "user mail was not found", I thought I post my
findings here. The takeaway is, make sure that your root directory has
the correct permissions, otherwise things will fail in an interesting
way. Of course, exim4 is in no way at fault here, it's just the package
which typically trips first over the misconfiguration described above.
Best regards
Alexander Kurtz
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