Problems with amavisd (premature end of SMTP transaction)

[Anonymous]

Folks:

When I installed the amavisd for use with Exim on my xserve (10.2.4, having upgraded perl to 5.8 as suggested after an abortive attempt with 5.6) i can’t get it to receive mail properly from Exim (or any SMTP agent).

Once the DATA phase on SMTP is finished, I get the response:

[code:1:4b05d407a5]421 4.3.2 Service shutting down, closing channel[/code:1:4b05d407a5]
(which should be an ‘OK’ to indicate that all is well if the transaction worked ok)

Which basically means it didn’t take the mail. I can repeat this and looking at the amavisd debug output there’s not a lot of help as to what’s going wrong – even with the debug level turned up to 5.

Debug output is below.

I’ve tried re-installing Perl and the whole lot from scratch to no avail. I know Exim is OK so I’m not reinstalling that. The only slight concern I have is the following line in the debug output when the amavisd starts:

[code:1:4b05d407a5]Failed to create default user preference file /var/amavis/.spamassassin/user_prefs[/code:1:4b05d407a5]

Although SpamAssasin docs imply that user_prefs is an ‘optional’ file (unless I’ve missed something major).

Any thoughts ?

..iain
—
iain at seatofthepants dot net

— debug output –>
[code:1:4b05d407a5]
Mar 9 20:33:41 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) SMTP< data\r\n
Mar 9 20:33:41 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) SMTP:10024 /var/amavis/amavis-20030309T203333-02054: <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]> Received: from ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (xserve-one [127.0.0.1:10024]) (amavisd-new) with SMTP id 02054-01 for <[email protected]>; Sun, 9 Mar 2003 20:33:33 +0000 (GMT)
Mar 9 20:33:41 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) SMTP> 354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) SMTP< .\r\n
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) body hash: 12ea50e7723c71ca3e906f56fc378b22
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) Original mail size: 192; quota set to: 102400 bytes
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) Checking: <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]>
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) Extracting mime components
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) Issued a new file name: part-00001
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) mime_decode: Content-type: text/plain, name:
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) Charging 31 bytes to remaining quota 102400 (out of 102400, (0%)) – by mime_decode
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) prolong_timer after mime_decode: remaining time = 244 s
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) Checking for banned MIME types and names
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) check_for_banned – mime-type: text/plain
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) lookup_RE: key="text/plain", no match
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) lookup_acl: key="[email protected]", no match
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) decode_parts: level=1, #parts=1 : part-00001
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) tempdir being removed: /var/amavis/amavis-20030309T203333-02054
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) rmdir_recursively: /var/amavis/amavis-20030309T203333-02054, excl=
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) rmdir_recursively: /var/amavis/amavis-20030309T203333-02054/parts, excl=0
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2054]: (02054-01) SMTP> 421 4.3.2 Service shutting down, closing channel
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2053]: Net::Server: Starting "1" children
Mar 9 20:34:37 xserve-one amavisd[2068]: Net::Server: Child Preforked (2068)[/code:1:4b05d407a5]

[Anonymous]

Turns out there were two problems:

1) SpamAssassin for some reason couldn’t see the user_prefs file. Solved by issuing the command:

touch /var/amavis/.spamassassin/user_prefs

This just creates the file so SpamAssassin doesn’t bleat. It’s Ok to be empty.

2) There is a problem with Net::Servers 0.85 (which is the latest version) and AMaViS. The solution is to downgrade to version 0.84 by typing (at the cpan prompt):

cpan> install R/RH/RHANDOM/Net-Server-0.84.tar.gz

I’d already figured out the problem wasn’t with Exim as Exim basically didn’t acknowedge the mail as delivered to AMaViSd – due to the lack of a ‘250 OK’ response. All works fine and dandy now.

..Iain

[Anonymous]

….it’s all running very well as far as I can see. A very well put together package is AMaVis and the mailing list folk are very helpful (that’s where the solution came from).

The only error I spotted in your article is that if you cut and paste the freshclam command line, the ‘-l’ flag which should be a lowercase “L” is actually a 1 (“ONE”) on your web page. It’s not a big deal but some people may be unsure what to do when freshclam complains.

Oh and the advice to ditch Perl 5.6 and reinstall 5.8 is I think more than just advice … seems to be essential as far as I can see and makes the CPAN install stuff much more reliable.

All in all though, you guys have helped me out a huge amount – an excellent set of articles. So thanks a lot!

Now if only you could help me to figure out a way to rebuild a broken RAID mirror without plugging a keyboard and monitor into my x-serve (which is 30 miles away) I’d be a happy man 🙂

..Iain
—
iain at seatofthepants dot net

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