Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite

I have Postfix installed and Sendmail is not running. I try to send mail using mail but the following warning comes up and the mail doesn't get sent:

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

This is also confusing me:

[root@ars etc]# postfix start
postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system
[root@ars etc]# postfix stop
postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is not running

Please help! I need this working for Bugzilla.

share|improve this question
1  
Your Postfix installation wasn't done properly. How was it installed? – womble Jan 5 '10 at 22:10

migrated from stackoverflow.com Jan 5 '10 at 21:56

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Looks like either your /var/spool/postfix directory structure is missing a directory or the permissions are wrong. On CentOS it looks like:

drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Jan  5 16:49 active
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Dec 23 16:18 bounce
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Aug 14  2008 corrupt
drwx------ 4 postfix root     4096 Dec 16 08:55 defer
drwx------ 4 postfix root     4096 Dec 16 08:55 deferred
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Aug 14  2008 flush
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Aug 14  2008 hold
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Jan  5 16:49 incoming
drwx-wx--- 2 postfix postdrop 4096 Jan  5 16:49 maildrop
drwxr-xr-x 2 root    root     4096 Dec 31 14:16 pid
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Dec 31 14:39 private
drwx--x--- 2 postfix postdrop 4096 Dec 31 14:39 public
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Aug 14  2008 saved
drwx------ 2 postfix root     4096 Aug 14  2008 trace

Check your /var/log/mail or /var/log/maillog file for error messages. The reason you can't stop postfix is because it's not starting in the first place.

share|improve this answer
Mine looks exactly like that. – Chetan Jan 5 '10 at 22:27
Then Postfix thinks it's queue directories should be somewhere else. Post your complete main.cf in the question. – womble Jan 6 '10 at 3:16
up vote 1 down vote

Try running 'postfix check' to see if it finds any obvious errors which will include incorrect permissions and should point you in the right direction.

share|improve this answer
Is that an equivalent to "postsuper -s" (which is what I was going to suggest)? – Geoff Fritz Jan 5 '10 at 22:43
No, postsuper -s does different things to postfix check. – womble Jan 6 '10 at 3:17
up vote 0 down vote

here is a GREAT tutorial on installing/configuring postfix and many plugins. It also has some key postfix testing techniques

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.