Postgrey does not stop after 'sudo service postgrey stop'

[Bruno Léon]

service postgrey stop does not actually stop the service, it stays there running.

[pirlo (admin-pirlo)]

same problem here on multiple 12.04 systems:

root@server:~# cat /var/run/postgrey.pid
1302
root@server:~# service postgrey restart
 * Stopping postfix greylisting daemon postgrey [ OK ]
 * Starting postfix greylisting daemon postgrey [ OK ]
root@server:~# cat /var/run/postgrey.pid
19917
root@server:~# ps -ef|grep postgrey
postgrey 1302 1 0 Jun01 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/postgrey --pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid --daemonize --inet=10023
root 19995 19772 0 12:45 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto postgrey
root@server:~# service postgrey status
 * postgrey is not running
root@server:~# kill 1302
root@server:~# service postgrey start
 * Starting postfix greylisting daemon postgrey Pid_file "/var/run/postgrey.pid" already exists. Overwriting!
                                                                                                  [ OK ]
root@server:~# service postgrey status
 * postgrey is running

root@server:~# cat /var/run/postgrey.pid
21897
root@server:~# start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --pidfile /var/run/postgrey.pid --name postgrey
No postgrey found running; none killed.

start-stop-daemon does not find the postgrey process - even if I use "--exec /usr/sbin/postgrey" it won't work!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[pirlo (admin-pirlo)]

the problem seem to be that start-stop-daemon uses /proc/pid/stat to identifiy the process - since ubuntu 12.04 stat changed a little bit!

this ist from ubuntu 11.10:
root@server:~# cat /proc/1816/stat
1816 (postgrey) S 1 1816 1816 0 -1 4202816 1088 0 7 0 0 5 0 0 20 0 1 0 78655 12664832 2025 4294967295 134512640 135724624 3215822704 3215822032 3078628388 0 0 128 86023 3239325390 0 0 17 1 0 0 106 0 0

and this one form 12.04:
root@server:~# cat /proc/21897/stat
21897 (/usr/sbin/postg) S 1 21897 21897 0 -1 4202816 1258 0 5 0 2 8 0 0 20 0 1 0 25279596 16523264 2416 4294967295 134512640 135963288 3220517632 3220517008 3077846052 0 0 128 86023 3239400398 0 0 17 3 0 0 150 0 0

if I use "/usr/sbin/postg" to start-stop the daemon it works:
root@server:~# start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --pidfile /var/run/postgrey.pid --name /usr/sbin/postg

after that no postgrey process is left

[JorSol (jorsol)]

Confirmed, start-stop-daemon uses /usr/sbin/postg as the name...

I made changes to /etc/init.d/postgrey and change $NAME varaible to /usr/sbin/postg in start/stop/reload (next to --name) and it works.

[grufo (ml-grufo)]

does not work for me!

if I change $NAME to /usr/sbin/postg nothing happens...

root@egal:/etc/init.d# /etc/init.d/postgrey stop
 * Stopping postfix greylisting daemon /usr/sbin/postg [ OK ]
root@egal:/etc/init.d# ps -ef|grep postgrey
postgrey 1192 1 0 Jul01 ? 00:00:39 /usr/sbin/postgrey --pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid --daemonize --inet=10023 --delay=300
root 21447 26998 0 07:14 pts/1 00:00:00 grep postgrey

postgrey is still alive!

[Christian Gebler (geblerc)]

Post #3 works for me.

But i didn't understand why "/usr/sbin/postg" is okay for the daemon and the full path not...

Please do something and fix this Bug! :-)

thx

[Ian McConnell (ian-c)]

Alternatively, you can just remove the --name option

root# start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --pidfile /var/run/postgrey.pid

Also since

root:~# /etc/init.d/postgrey stop

does not stop the daemon, then

root:~# /etc/init.d/postgrey reload

means that the configuration files in /etc/postgrey are *not* reread. You have to manually kill the postgrey daemon and
then start it. Not obvious, if you're trying to figure out why emails are disappearing.

[Christian d'Heureuse (chdh)]

I have the same problem and fixed it by making the following modifications in /etc/init.d/postgrey:

added:
PROCNAME=/usr/sbin/postg

replaced:
$NAME by $PROCNAME for start-stop-daemon and status_of_proc

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

Debian bug for this: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=670681

I can't figure out how to make Launchpad link with it.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

@chdh: There's no need to change the status_of_proc invocation; the "$NAME" there is just for display purposes.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

Filed an upstream issue for this: https://github.com/schweikert/postgrey/issues/5

[psl (slansky)]

A patch based on Christian idea described in comment 8 was attached to #1289424 (duplicate of this bug report).

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

For the record this affects 14.04 LTS too.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

As a workaround I replaced /etc/init.d/postgrey with http://sources.debian.net/src/postgrey/1.35-1/debian/postgrey.init/

[Åka Sikrom (akrosikam)]

So it's 2016, and this has yet to be fixed in 14.04. Any ideas on who to contact in order to get slansky's patch merged into the official repo's as a bug fix?

[Åka Sikrom (akrosikam)]

(…that is, given that it works for everybody)

[Fleish (lasnchpad)]

Does anyone know who maintains this package in Ubuntu? Might be worthwhile reaching out to them directly.

[Åka Sikrom (akrosikam)]

+1 @lasnchpad

The LP package page only says Antonio Radici, who is an upstream (Debian) package maintainer. According to a Debian bug report (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=670681), this was fixed in Debian in late 2014.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

This was fixed in Debian in 1.34-1.3, closing the ticket and opening a trusty task.