[Novalug] sendmail error

[covici at ccs.covici.com]

Jon LaBadie <novalugml at jgcomp.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:04:09AM -0400, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
> > Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > >I'm trying to set up login authentication to Verizon as a 'smarthost'.
> > >But my sendmail is not able to access the db file containing the
> > >id/password info.  Here is the maillog message, even before trying
> > >to access outgoing.verizon.net.
> > >
> > > SYSERR(root): Cannot open hash database /etc/mail/authinfo.db: Invalid 
> > > argument
> > >
> > >The same error in in the messages logfile but with no additional info.
> > >
> > >Any ideas what might be the "Invalid argument".
> > >
> > >The file exists, -rw-------  1 root  other  32768 Oct 28 18:34 authinfo.db
> > >and sendmail does run as suid root.
> > >
> > >Jon
> >
> > Yes, sendmail is suid root, so it can do things like open privileged 
> > sockets, namely port 25. And when that it done it switches to another 
> > UID/GID...pardon me while I go look it up.....
> > 
> > Tradionally, it switched to UID/GID of 1/1, which may have been daemon, 
> > or sys, or bin withthe directives
> > 
> > Ou1
> > Og1
> > 
> > But in current Linux it runs as 8/12, which is mail/mail via
> > 
> > O DefaultUser = 8:12
> > 
> > So...any file you want send mail to read or write had better be owned or 
> > have a group of mail and the appropriate permissions.
> > 
> > You're Welcome,
> > 
> 
> Good thought.  On my Fedora 9 it seems to run as smmsp:smmsp.  On the
> Solaris 9 box I'm doing this on there is a mail group, but no mail
> user.  Again, the mail submission part of sendmail runs as smmsp:smmsp.
> On both the sendmail daemon accepting connections on both systems runs
> as root:smmsp.
> 
> Using this info I tried about 10 different combinations of owner/group
> and restrictive modes.  And I tried moving authinfo.db into a secure
> subdir with root or smmsp ownership.  Anytime the authinfo.db file was
> NOT owned by root I got a different error (unsafe file), 
> 
>    SYSERR(root): hash map "authinfo": \
>        unsafe map file /etc/mail/auth/authinfo.db: Permission denied
> 
> When it was owned by root I again got the original "cannot open ...
> invalid argument" error.

Did you try remaking the file and are you sure the text file is correct?


-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici at ccs.covici.com