Tips August 23, 2005 at 12:50 pm

Amavisd log rotation error

In Tiger Server, some typo has been added to the daily scripts, which are located in /etc/periodic/daily/

These scripts are activated by the Server Admin GUI when enabling log rotation on the Mail logs.

The problem here is that the amavisd log is rotated but the amavisd master process is not HUPed, so the amavisd.log file stays empty till this is done… Not very useful.

The problem is located in the 700.daily.server.cyrus file in the /etc/periodic/daily folder.

%logsAndProcesses = ("/var/log/mailaccess.log","syslog",
"/var/log/amavis.log","amivisd",
"/var/log/clamav.log","amivisd",
"/var/log/freshclam.log","freshclam",
"/var/mailman/logs/","python.mailmanctl");

Yes, read it closely… amivisd… Apple programmer who must have really been tired and fed up with writing config files…

Change the amivisd to amavisd and your problem is solved…

No Comments

  • And perhaps shouldn’t the
    "/var/log/clamav.log","amivisd",
    be
    "/var/log/clamav.log","clamd",
    as well?

  • It looks OK in 10.4.5:
    %logsAndProcesses = ("/var/log/mailaccess.log","syslog",
    "/var/log/amavis.log","amivisd",
    "/var/log/clamav.log","amivisd",
    "/var/log/freshclam.log","freshclam",
    "/var/mailman/logs/*","python.*mailmanctl");

  • I am guessing that the author and previous commenters run light-duty mail servers. There is actually another problem with this script that only comes to light if amavis is actually checking an email when the job runs. The process to be HUP’d should be “amavisd \\(master\\)”, otherwise some random amavisd process will get killed and the master will keep launching children pointing at the defunct log file handle.

    ...
    "/var/log/amavis.log","amavisd \\(master\\)",
    "/var/log/clamav.log","amavisd \\(master\\)",
    ...

    (yes, two backslashes, hooray escaping!)

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