I found some posts on the web indicating that, if spamd is having trouble doing DNS resolution, it's probably because of a bum entry in /etc/resolv.conf. I don't think that's the case here, though, so I'm coming to the list...
My logs are full of runs like this: dns: sendto() to [127.0.0.1]:53 failed: Connection refused, failing over to [::1]:53 dns: sendto() to [::1]:53 failed: Connection refused, failing over to [127.0.0.1]:53 It bounces back and forth many times between ipv4 and ipv6, then ends in: dns: bad dns reply: Connection refused dns: bad dns reply: Connection refused dns: bad dns reply: Connection refused In between these runs, spamassassin works fine. Except the sa-update cronjobs also fail regularly with: /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin: channel: could not find working mirror, channel failed sa-update failed for unknown reasons Which I assume is attributable to the same problem. The server uses Rackspace's default DNS servers, and they appear to work okay. My assumption is that I've misconfigured something -- either spamd shouldn't be consulting localhost in the first place, or it shouldn't be trying to use ipv6, or maybe both. Can anyone guess from this what I might have set up incorrectly? Thanks! Eric