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Bogus mailbox problem & fix

2006-06-12 06:23:07
I have a had a problem with one users mailbox for some time. I kept 
getting messages as follows:-

 ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
"|IFS=' ' && p=/usr/bin/procmail && test -f $p && exec $p -Yf- || exit 
75 #albert"
    (reason: Can't create output)
    (expanded from: albert)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
procmail: Renaming bogus mailbox "/var/spool/mail/albert" info 
"/var/spool/mail/BOGUS.albert.gLE"
procmail: Couldn't create "/var/spool/mail/albert"
550 5.0.0 "|IFS=' ' && p=/usr/bin/procmail && test -f $p && exec $p -Yf- 
|| exit 75 #albert"... Can't create output


After Googling and reading through these archives I checked the 
permissions and ownership of the users (albert) home directory, 
.forward, .procmailrc, msgid.chache and mail box file. these all checked 
out.

My verbose log entries showed errors in creating lock files and mail 
logs showed permission denied errors on the .forward file.

Having read the procmail man pages which mention that procmail might do 
file locking based on the content of /etc/passwd..I decided to have a 
look at it. to my surprise I found entries for the user albert one in 
/etc/passwd format and another pointing to /etc/shadow. It seems my 
system runs /etc/shadow passwords with user albert's uid '1000' however 
the /etc/passwd entry had a uid of ' 500'. Sniffing blood I ran a check 
on user albert's files using " ls -n .procmailrc" etc etc for the other 
files. They were all found to have a uid of 500.  Eureka!!

The cause was that some time ago I migrated servers, copied the user 
albert's .procmailrc etc from the old server and so the incorrect uid's 
were transfered. After deleting the /etc/passwd entries for albert and 
changing the uid's to his files to '1000' the problem was fixed.

hope this helps someone.

Nigel




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