I have a situation that is most likely a problem with my understanding of
postfix and not a code problem. I am getting ready to take over a domain name
for mail service. A number of new addresses in that domain need to be
forwarded to other mail servers. I setup postfix to do that and it worked
fine. However, there is still some time before I actually take over the
domain. In the meantime I was entering some of the addresses and forwarding
addresses into the vmail alias file. Each entry was preceded by "# ". My
understanding was that lines starting with a # would be ignored. I did not
bother to run postmap as it would do nothing useful.
Several hours later I noticed that no outgoing mail was going out. Everything
was receiving an error in maillog:
May 8 00:02:49 mail postfix/error[83540]: 8A72B114C3EE: to=<wa6...@arrl.net>,
relay=none, delay=94792, delays=94792/0.03/0/0, dsn=4.3.0, status=deferred
(mail transport unavailable)
Note, this address was not in the vmail alias file. It appears to have
affected all outgoing mail. Incoming mail was processed normally.
In addition there were a number of these messages (starting hours later in the
day):
May 8 23:44:57 mail postfix/smtpd[95331]: warning: database
/usr/local/etc/postfix/vmail_alias.db is older than source file
/usr/local/etc/postfix/vmail_alias
To restore service, I removed all these entries, ran post map and did postfix
restart. Problem continued until I terminated postfix and restarted it. Then
outgoing mail resumed delivery properly.
mail# postconf -n
command_directory = /usr/local/sbin
compatibility_level = 2
daemon_directory = /usr/local/libexec/postfix
data_directory = /var/db/postfix
debug_peer_level = 2
debugger_command = PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin ddd
$daemon_directory/$process_name $process_id & sleep 5
dovecot_destination_recipient_limit = 1
home_mailbox = Maildir/
html_directory = /usr/local/share/doc/postfix
inet_protocols = ipv4
mail_owner = postfix
mail_spool_directory = /var/spool/mail
mailbox_size_limit = 0
mailq_path = /usr/local/bin/mailq
manpage_directory = /usr/local/man
max_use = 5
message_size_limit = 102400000
mydestination = localhost.$mydomain, localhost
mydomain = sermon-archive.info
mynetworks_style = subnet
newaliases_path = /usr/local/bin/newaliases
postscreen_access_list = permit_mynetworks,
cidr:/usr/local/etc/postfix/access.cidr
queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix
readme_directory = /usr/local/share/doc/postfix
sample_directory = /usr/local/etc/postfix
sendmail_path = /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
setgid_group = maildrop
smtp_destination_recipient_limit = 25
smtpd_authorized_xclient_hosts = 10.0.1.0/24
smtpd_command_filter = pcre:/usr/local/etc/postfix/quote
smtpd_error_sleep_time = 10
smtpd_hard_error_limit = 10
smtpd_milters = unix:/var/run/clamav/clmilter.sock
smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth
smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_soft_error_limit = 1
smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/mail.pem
smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/mail.key
smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1
smtpd_tls_security_level = may
unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/vmail_alias
virtual_gid_maps = static:2222
virtual_mailbox_base = /var/mail/
virtual_mailbox_domains = hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/vmail_domains
virtual_mailbox_limit = 102400000
virtual_mailbox_maps = hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/vmail_mailbox
virtual_minimum_uid = 2222
virtual_transport = dovecot
virtual_uid_maps = static:2222
mail#
mail# postconf -Mf
smtpd pass - - n - - smtpd
smtp inet n - n - 1 postscreen
dnsblog unix - - n - 0 dnsblog
tlsproxy unix - - n - 0 tlsproxy
submission inet n - n - - smtpd
dovecot unix - n n - - pipe flags=DRhu
user=vmail:vmail argv=/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-lda -f ${sender}
-d ${recipient}
pickup unix n - n 60 1 pickup
cleanup unix n - n - 0 cleanup
qmgr unix n - n 300 1 qmgr
tlsmgr unix - - n 1000? 1 tlsmgr
rewrite unix - - n - - trivial-rewrite
bounce unix - - n - 0 bounce
defer unix - - n - 0 bounce
trace unix - - n - 0 bounce
verify unix - - n - 1 verify
flush unix n - n 1000? 0 flush
proxymap unix - - n - - proxymap
proxywrite unix - - n - 1 proxymap
smtp unix - - n - - smtp
relay unix - - n - - smtp
showq unix n - n - - showq
error unix - - n - - error
retry unix - - n - - error
discard unix - - n - - discard
local unix - n n - - local
virtual unix - n n - - virtual
lmtp unix - - n - - lmtp
anvil unix - - n - 1 anvil
scache unix - - n - 1 scache
mail#
vmail_alias file contained
# user1@domain1 user1@domain2
# user2@domain1 user2@domain3
# user3@domain1 user3@domain4
The domain names 1-4 above are not in any of the other maps, or in any file in
the config directory. When I had only the following in vmail_alias:
testuser@domain5 testuser@domain1
Mail to testuser@domain5 was properly forwarded to testuser@domain1. Domain5
is in the virtual_mailbox_domains file.
— Doug
