prayer doesn't start due to missing directory

[Rich Ingram]

Binary package hint: prayer

Hello:

Prayer doesn't start up automatically after a reboot. It appears to be because there is no /var/run/prayer directory. Here's what I do manually to fix the problem:

rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/prayer start
 * Starting webmail server prayer prayer PANICLOG:
  Failed to open panic log file: "paniclog"
  Error was: Dec 01 11:55:13 [5949] Couldn't create directory: "/var/run/prayer/sockets": No such file or directory
                                                                                                                             [fail]
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$ sudo mkdir /var/run/prayer
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$ sudo chown prayer /var/run/prayer
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/prayer start
 * Starting webmail server prayer [ OK ]
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$

Here is my release information:

rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$

Here is the package information:

rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$ apt-cache policy prayer
prayer:
  Installed: 1.2.2.1-5aubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.2.2.1-5aubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.2.2.1-5aubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$
rich@toaster:/etc/init.d$

Please let me know if more information is needed of if I am doing anything wrong.

Best regards,
Rich

[Magnus Holmgren (holmgren)]

Do you have a tmpfs filesystem mounted as /var/run? I should of course have covered that situation...

[Rich Ingram (rich-ferlie)]

I'm afraid that it doesn't take much to stump me. I don't know the answer. This is a fairly generic Ubuntu installation. Does this help?

rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 75529312 13660936 58031656 20% /
tmpfs 240672 0 240672 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 240672 368 240304 1% /var/run
varlock 240672 0 240672 0% /var/lock
udev 240672 2716 237956 2% /dev
tmpfs 240672 0 240672 0% /dev/shm
lrm 240672 2000 238672 1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile
rich@toaster:~$
rich@toaster:~$

Best regards,
Rich

[Magnus Holmgren (holmgren)]

Yes. Thank you. Judging from discussions about /var/run on the debian-devel mailing list, mounting a tmpfs on /var/run has been the default for a long time, so I wonder why nobody reported this bug sooner...

As a workaround, you can put

  install -d -o prayer -m 0750 /var/run/prayer

on the first line in the start() subroutine in /etc/init.d/prayer. I'm considering whether prayer should be (carefully) patched to create certain directories before dropping root privileges.

[Rich Ingram (rich-ferlie)]

The workaround works great! Thanks very much for the help.

Best regards,
Rich

[Magnus Holmgren (holmgren)]

This bug was fixed in 1.2.2.1-7, but I didn't get the changelog entry right to automatically close the bug.