Postfix refuses to start because file postfix-files is missing

[Dirk Deimeke]

Hi!

Postfix refuses to start in Ubuntu LTS 20.04, most probably because postfix-files is missing.

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Log:

May 27 16:58:39 wes systemd[1]: Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -)...
May 27 16:58:41 wes postmulti[20632]: /usr/lib/postfix/sbin/post-install: Error: /etc/postfix/postfix-files is not a file.
May 27 16:58:41 wes postfix/postfix-script[20638]: warning: unable to create missing queue directories
May 27 16:58:41 wes postmulti[20640]: postsuper: fatal: scan_dir_push: open directory hold: No such file or directory
May 27 16:58:41 wes postfix/postsuper[20640]: fatal: scan_dir_push: open directory hold: No such file or directory
May 27 16:58:42 wes postfix/postfix-script[20641]: fatal: Postfix integrity check failed!
May 27 16:58:43 wes systemd[1]: [e-mail]: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 27 16:58:43 wes systemd[1]: [e-mail]: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 27 16:58:43 wes systemd[1]: Failed to start Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -).

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# dpkg -S postfix-files
postfix: /etc/postfix/postfix-files
postfix: /etc/postfix/postfix-files.d

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# dpkg -l | grep postfix
ii postfix 3.4.10-1ubuntu1 amd64 High-performance mail transport agent

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# ls -ld /etc/postfix/postfix-files* /etc/postfix/postfix-files*/*
ls: cannot access '/etc/postfix/postfix-files*/*': No such file or directory
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 16 19:48 /etc/postfix/postfix-files.d

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Cheers

Dirk

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

The package ships the file, so it's not a postfix bug.

https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/amd64/postfix/filelist

[Dirk Deimeke (dirk.deimeke)]

I see that it is in the filelist, but it does not get installed.

So, maybe it is a packaging problem.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

That's almost certainly not the case.

[Dirk Deimeke (dirk.deimeke)]

I found the problem.

There was a directory which led the scripts to think postfix was already configured.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

[Simon Déziel (sdeziel)]

@Dirk, can't reproduce it here:

$ lxc launch images:ubuntu/focal postfix01
$ lxc exec postfix01 -- apt-get install -y postfix
$ lxc exec postfix01 -- systemctl status postfix
● postfix.service - Postfix Mail Transport Agent
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/postfix.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Wed 2020-05-27 16:42:24 UTC; 8s ago
   Main PID: 1309 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 4915)
     Memory: 0B
     CGroup: /system.slice/postfix.service

May 27 16:42:23 postfix01 systemd[1]: Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent...
May 27 16:42:24 postfix01 systemd[1]: Finished Postfix Mail Transport Agent.