2

To clear the mail log I deleted /var/log/mail.log and /var/log/mail.err.

Now it seems like I've broken something as the files are not recreated as I interact with mail:

kidmose@radagast:~$ echo "Test text" | mail -s "From radagast" [email protected]
kidmose@radagast:~$ cat /var/log/mail.log
cat: /var/log/mail.log: No such file or directory

Any ideas as how to make logging work again?

(Ideally without reinstall or reboot)

My setup:

kidmose@radagast:~$ uname -a
Linux radagast 3.13.0-32-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 03:51:08 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
kidmose@radagast:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS
Release:    14.04
Codename:   trusty
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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
7
  1. Remove the files belonging to root (If there), as suggested by @Dan.

  2. Restart MTA(sendmail in my case) and syslog, as suggested by @drookie

    sudo service sendmail restart 
sudo service rsyslog restart

Bonus info: The files will then be created as syslog:adm

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5

touch /var/log/mail.log /var/log/mail.err, then restart whatever is writing to them, like your MTA or syslog.

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3
  • Restarted sendmail and rsyslog(sudo service sendmail restart and sudo service rsyslog restart) to no avail.
    – kidmose
    Feb 5, 2015 at 10:59
  • 4
    If you did not forcefully created them with the touch commands, restarting syslog should do the trick (depending on the configuration, syslog may not create them as root)
    – Dan
    Feb 5, 2015 at 19:02
  • @Dan: You're right, solved it.
    – kidmose
    Feb 6, 2015 at 10:43
0

On Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS:

  1. touch /var/log/mail.log /var/log/mail.err
  2. chown syslog:adm /var/log/mail.log /var/log/mail.err
  3. service postfix reload

After those three commands you should have new records inside of /var/log/mail.log:

Jan 18 05:14:21 ubuntu-srv postfix/master[9405]: reload -- version 3.1.0, configuration /etc/postfix

Another way to see some short history of necessary logs including whats happeinging postfix is the journalctl command

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In my case, ubuntu 8 (i know old one...) 1. Restart OS. 2. touch /var/log/mail.log 3. chown syslog:adm /var/log/mail.log

mail.log is now filling with data... It was big relief. Aleksej

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  • Step 1 should have been sufficient on its own.
    – womble ♦
    Oct 6, 2019 at 5:21
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In my case helped only this one command service rsyslog restart and mail.log was created and written ok, because touch /var/mail.log just created file but was never written and restart or stop/start of postfix did not solved it. After service rsyslog restart free space reported by df was finally released. Before I had free space just 3GB and after service rsyslog restart 6 GB. I was not able to detect what occupies too many space. It was huge mail.log which was deleted but free space never released. Strange.

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