Postfix service enabled but won't start on reboot

Question

As the title mention it, the postfix service won't start after rebooting the system. We are using our own custom Linux OS based on OpenSuse 12.1 and recently verification departement has found that the /var repository is getting bigger and bigger due to unsend mail in the maildrop queue of postfix.

Who send those mails ? We have some applications that share some logs between systems.

I was looking over different kind of forum for my answer without any success.

After rebbot :

$systemctl status postfix.service
postfix.service - Postfix Mail Transport Agent
          Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/postfix.service; enabled)
          Active: inactive (dead)
          CGroup: name=systemd:/system/postfix.service

I found here Postfix doesn't start on reboot that the problem can be a possible conflict with sendmail. To make sure that sendmail program is well link with postfix :

$ ldd /usr/sbin/sendmail
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fffa25ff000)
        libpostfix-global.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libpostfix-global.so.1 (0x00007fdb174d2000)
        libpostfix-util.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libpostfix-util.so.1 (0x00007fdb1729a000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007fdb16f0a000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fdb16d06000)
        libdb-4.8.so => /usr/lib64/libdb-4.8.so (0x00007fdb1698a000)
        libnsl.so.1 => /lib64/libnsl.so.1 (0x00007fdb16772000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fdb1770b000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fdb16555000)

I also check in /var/log/messages and there's not any information about sendmail or even postfix failure.

Let's start the service :

$ systemctl start postfix.service
$ systemctl status postfix.service
postfix.service - Postfix Mail Transport Agent
          Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/postfix.service; enabled)
          Active: active (running) since Sat, 28 Jan 2017 21:49:37 +0300; 41s ago
         Process: 3450 ExecStartPost=/etc/postfix/system/cond_slp register (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
         Process: 3444 ExecStartPost=/etc/postfix/system/wait_qmgr 60 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
         Process: 3368 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/postfix start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
         Process: 3366 ExecStartPre=/etc/postfix/system/update_chroot (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
         Process: 3363 ExecStartPre=/bin/echo Starting mail service (Postfix) (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
        Main PID: 3443 (master)
          CGroup: name=systemd:/system/postfix.service
                  ├ 3443 /usr/lib/postfix/master
                  ├ 3445 pickup -l -t fifo -u
                  ├ 3446 qmgr -l -t fifo -u
                  ├ 3447 cleanup -z -t unix -u
                  ├ 3466 trivial-rewrite -n rewrite -t unix -u
                  ├ 3467 local -t unix
                  ├ 3468 local -t unix
                  └ 3469 local -t unix

Good. Reboot the system and the service turn to inactive(dead). Returning to /var/log I found this file mail.warn

$ cat mail.info
Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2527]: warning: not owned by group maildrop: /usr/sbin/postqueue
Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2528]: warning: not owned by group maildrop: /usr/sbin/postdrop
Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2530]: warning: not set-gid or not owner+group+world executable: /usr/sbin/postqueue
Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2531]: warning: not set-gid or not owner+group+world executable: /usr/sbin/postdrop
Jan 28 21:49:37 msx postfix/postfix-script[3430]: warning: not owned by group maildrop: /usr/sbin/postqueue
Jan 28 21:49:37 msx postfix/postfix-script[3431]: warning: not owned by group maildrop: /usr/sbin/postdrop
Jan 28 21:49:37 msx postfix/postfix-script[3434]: warning: not set-gid or not owner+group+world executable: /usr/sbin/postqueue
Jan 28 21:49:37 msx postfix/postfix-script[3435]: warning: not set-gid or not owner+group+world executable: /usr/sbin/postdrop

I don't know if this can't help to resolve my problem.

Extra informations

Inside the postfix.service file :

$ cat /etc/systemd/system/postfix.service
[Unit]
Description=Postfix Mail Transport Agent
Requires=var-run.mount nss-lookup.target network.target remote-fs.target syslog.target time-sync.target
After=var-run.mount nss-lookup.target network.target remote-fs.target syslog.target time-sync.target
After=amavis.service mysql.service cyrus.service ldap.service openslp.service ypbind.service
Before=mail-transfer-agent.target
Conflicts=sendmail.service exim.service

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/spool/postfix/pid/master.pid
ExecStartPre=-/bin/echo 'Starting mail service (Postfix)'
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/sysconfig/postfix
ExecStartPre=/etc/postfix/system/update_chroot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/postfix start
ExecStartPost=/etc/postfix/system/wait_qmgr 60
ExecStartPost=/etc/postfix/system/cond_slp register
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/postfix reload
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/postfix flush
ExecStop=/usr/sbin/postfix stop
ExecStopPost=/etc/postfix/system/cond_slp deregister

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

List all services after rebooting without starting the postfix service.

$systemctl list-unit-files --type=service
...
klog.service              disabled
klogd.service             masked
ldconfig.service          masked
loadmodules.service       masked
local.service             static
localfs.service           static
openhpid.service          enabled
postfix.service           enabled
postgresql.service        static
poweroff.service          static
proc.service              masked
...

UPDATE

After set LogLevel=debug in /etc/systemd/system.conf, I was able to have more data related to this issue. In /var/log/messages/ I found this :

Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111126] systemd[1]: -.mount changed dead -> mounted
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111147] systemd[1]: Activating default unit: default.target
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111153] systemd[1]: Trying to enqueue job multi-user.target/start/replace
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111204] systemd[1]: Cannot add dependency job for unit hpiwdt.service, ignoring: Unit hpiwdt.service failed to load: No such file or directory. See system logs and 'systemctl status hpiwdt.service' for details.
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111276] systemd[1]: Found ordering cycle on lwresd.service/start
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111279] systemd[1]: Walked on cycle path to nss-lookup.target/start
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111281] systemd[1]: Walked on cycle path to lwresd.service/start
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111284] systemd[1]: Breaking ordering cycle by deleting job nss-lookup.target/start
Jan 31 19:17:00 msx kernel:   10.111286] systemd[1]: Deleting job postfix.service/start as dependency of job nss-lookup.target/start

I don't even know what is or does nss-lookup. If anyone have any idea. Thank you.

Solution

All else aside, openSUSE 12.1 is a little old (released 2013), and no longer receives updates, so I would consider looking into using a more recent OS.

Your log shows some permission issues (postfix has a few accounts/groups it uses for unprivileged actions, so it can get a bit messy):

Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2527]: warning: not owned by group maildrop: /usr/sbin/postqueue
Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2528]: warning: not owned by group maildrop: /usr/sbin/postdrop
Jan 28 03:13:55 msx postfix/postfix-script[2530]: warning: not set-gid or not owner+group+world executable: /usr/sbin/postqueue

On a more recent SUSE system, the permissions for postfix are given as:

> sudo cat /etc/permissions.d/postfix
/usr/sbin/sendmail              root:root       0755
/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd        root:root       0600
/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db     root:root       0600
/usr/sbin/postqueue             root:maildrop   2755
/usr/sbin/postdrop              root:maildrop   2755

Applying those permissions should resolve the two basic issues seen in your logs, postdrop and postqueue having bad ownership and mode.

You could run sudo chkstat --warn --system to check what permissions might need fixing up, and if all looks good, let it do its thing by running sudo chkstat --system --set

Comments

[Pablo Martinez]

Can you post the output of journalctl -u postfix ? Probably there you will have some messages that point you to the root cause.

[sebix]

cross post: unix.stackexchange.com/q/350633/88119

[SAN ALexis]

Thank you @iwaseatenbyagrue for your answer. Since we have a custom OS, someting it takes longer to release it because for each new OS we need to port our changes and test them. We are thinking to move to CentOS for it long "end of life" support. postqueue and postdrop permissions was set to 0755 I change them to 2755. Still have the same problem.