socket file location doesn't support chroot'd postfix smtpd, which is default

[Stephen Warren]

Binary package hint: spamass-milter

A default postfix install, at least on Jaunty, runs smtpd chroot'd.

/etc/init.d/spamass-milter contains this:

if [ -x /usr/sbin/postfix ]; then
    SOCKET="/var/spool/postfix/spamass/spamass.sock"

which is fine for non-chroot'd smtpd, but doesn't work for chroot'd smtpd.

To solve this, I did something like:

mkdir -p /var/spool/postfix/var/spool/postfix/spamass
ln /var/spool/postfix/spamass/spamass.sock spamass.sock

It'd be nice if the spamass-milter package packaged that directory/link, or created them on install or startup; that way, chroot'd smtpd would "just work".

[Don Armstrong (dondelelcaro)]

It does just work. See the instructions in /usr/share/doc/spamass-milter/README.Debian:

--------------------------------------------------------------
  Integrating spamass-milter into your postfix installation
--------------------------------------------------------------

You need to edit /etc/postfix/main.cf and configure smptpd_milters so
that postfix connects to the spamass-milter socket. Something like:

  # spamass-milter configuration
  smtpd_milters = unix:/var/spool/postfix/spamass/spamass.sock

should work. Note, however, if you're using a chrooted version of
postfix, you'll need the local path to the socket inside of the
chroot. In recent versions of Debian the following should work:

  # spamass-milter configuration
  smtpd_milters = unix:/spamass/spamass.sock
  # milter macros useful for spamass-milter
  milter_connect_macros = j {daemon_name} v {if_name} _

See http://www.postfix.org/MILTER_README.html or
/usr/share/doc/postfix/MILTER_README.gz (in postfix-doc) for
information on how to set tempfail and the various timeouts that the
sendmail configuration above uses.

The defaults for spamass-milter adjust themselves so that no
configuration in /etc/default/spamass-milter should be required.
[However, if you are not doing so, see below.]

[Don Armstrong (dondelelcaro)]

Documentation already explains how to deal with this easily.

[Stephen Warren (srwarren)]

It doesn't "just work". "Just work" means "it works without having to change anything to make it work".

The reason I filed this bug is not because it can't be made to work, but that the default configuration of the two packages (postfix, spamass-milter IIRC) when simply "apt-get install"'d is such that they will not work together without fixing this issue. It seems like the default setup of these two packages should be such that they work together correctly.

Now, if I was doing something non-standard, I'd be fine with having to read the documentation to make it work. However, that's not the case here.

So, in my opinion, this bug should be re-opened (unless the bug has been fixed already in a more recent release than I reported it against, but there's no evidence of that here).