sorry, I normally lurk on a list for a while before I start posting to get the feel, but if I don't send this soon, I'll forget all about it an it'll be lost to the ether forever.
I have a VM and have been working on figuring out why postfix [via centos 6] wasn't working the way I wanted, I'd get odd results like this: [root@orca postfix]# postfix stop postfix/postfix-script: stopping the Postfix mail system /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: ELF>@@8,�: arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: X�s2��: arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: �t2�: arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: : arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: ��2�0��2�@��2��@�}8�pP@8�: arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: P@�8�`P�8�p`�8�@@���8�p��8����8���8��: arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: �8�����8�: arguments must be process or job IDs /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script: line 153: kill: ���8�@@0�8�@�8�PP�`�8�P��: arguments must be process or job IDs postfix/postfix-script: waiting for the Postfix mail system to terminate postfix/postfix-script: waiting for the Postfix mail system to terminate postfix/postfix-script: waiting for the Postfix mail system to terminate postfix/postfix-script: waiting for the Postfix mail system to terminate ^C I started digging into the script to figure out what is doing what/where [root@orca postfix]# vi /usr/libexec/postfix/postfix-script [root@orca postfix]# cd /var/ [root@orca var]# find . -name "master.pid" ./spool/postfix/pid/master.pid [root@orca var]# file spool/postfix/pid/master.pid it seems the master.pid file was corrupted by some other process, overwriting with a core file spool/postfix/pid/master.pid: ELF 64-bit LSB core file x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), SVR4-style, from '/usr/sbin/abrtd' [root@orca var]# rm spool/postfix/pid/master.pid rm: remove regular file `spool/postfix/pid/master.pid'? y [root@orca var]# ls spool/postfix/pid/ unix.cleanup unix.defer unix.local unix.retry unix.smtp [root@orca var]# postfix stop postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is not running [root@orca var]# postfix start postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system [root@orca var]# postfix status postfix/postfix-script: the Postfix mail system is running: PID: 19579 [root@orca var]# ps auxww | grep pos removed and everything ended up working fine. it seems that there isn't any validation being done for the contents of the pid file and it isn't being removed if things go awry (or exit status checked, a few places where things could be done differently). if I make such changes/updates, is there a place I can submit my checks to be included in the next version/patch of postfix? baring that, is there someone else who'd like to make such changes? I may have hit a very odd edge case that may well never, ever happen to anyone again, but it still seems like a reasonable set of changes to make (at least to me). I believe this VM got into this state due to some upgrade problems I experienced. specifically I think I had 2 different processes/instances of the VM attempting to run at the same time due to the way I autostart VMs, the way the hypervisor software doesn't really deal with locking and partially complete upgrade to the hypervisor software. possibly relevant version info [root@orca var]# cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 6.6 (Final) [root@orca var]# rpm -q postfix postfix-2.6.6-6.el6_5.x86_64 thanks -- public gpg key id: AE60F64C