mail through maildrop disappears [solved]

hika · Last edited by hika on Tue Apr 01, 2014 4:12 pm; edited 2 times in total

I have setup a Courier-ldap mailserver sometime ago and it works fine.
I'm now working on fetchmail and basically it works except when I use maildrop to deliver the mail to its destination. It says it's OK but the mail is nowhere to be found. If I use sendmail it gets delivered as it should.
As said I use ldap for user info, authentication etc. Since I wanted the mail separated from the direct userdirectories (some have a linux one in /home others a samba one in /home/samba/users and a few have both and mail without either should be possible). In /etc/courier/authlib/authldaprc I have set LDAP_MAILROOT=/home/samba/maildirs. Under that root every mailaccount has his own mailuser directory with a Maildir in it. As said this works OK. except with maildrop, which comes from courier. Even if I use maildrop as 'maildrop -a -d <username>', where -a should force it to go past authlib, I don't see anything in the log. With sendmail I see it retrieving the maildir through authlib, as it must.

I haven't been able to get maildrop more telling on what it does. I've searched all alternative home locations, /var/mail and more. It seems it sends it to /dev/null. Also the documentation on maildrop as MDA is scares.

Fetchmail works with sendmail, but I need maildrop (according to the courier documentation) for filtering (spamassassin and clamav) or does somebody know how to do it without. An alternative way is through esmtp, but I can't get the authentication part working. Probably because of ldap, esmtp still wants authentication if I turn it of. And adding esmtpuser and asmtppassword to fetchmailrc gives me a syntaxerror.

Working fetchmailrc with sendmail with the maildrop alternative remarked out:

hika · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:44 pm Post subject:

I had an idea, that didn't work, but might be the right track.
As said in /etc/courier/authlib/authldaprc the variables LDAP_MAILROOT, LDAP_HOMEDIR and the variable LDAP_MAILDIR determine the location of the maildir:
where I have set LDAP_HOMEDIR=uid, which is the username
eg ${LDAP_MAILROOT}/${ LDAP_HOMEDIR}/${LDAP_MAILDIR}

In /et/courier/courierd I see two variables:

khayyam · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 9:47 pm Post subject:

hika ...

I've not used courier, but I've used maildrop in conjunction with qmail (an awful long time ago) ... anyhow, what immediately comes to mind here is permissions, and ownership. The maildrop documentation has the following comments:

hika · Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:02 pm Post subject:

I've seen that text and checked the sticky bit, but it wasn't set, but just to be sure I ran chmod -R u-s on the mailuser directory. Originally I had set all the mail directories as owned by $USER.mail with 770 (or 660 for the files). I have then removed the group rights, with no effect. Also courier itself runs fine and I don't get no error, which baffles me the most.
I was now thinking of temporarily creating a Maildir in /root, but I don't expect any of it.

hika · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:36 am Post subject:

Much earlier I saw a file Maildir, containing the messages apear in /home/hika after I think I saw a pop-up about having mail. That's when I created the simlink to the real Maildir in /home/samba/maildirs/hika. After which through maildrop no mail message arrived there anymore. I just saw the same with root. A message on the console: "You have new mail in /var/mail/root" and nothing there (I had created a Maildir there) and a container file "Maildir" with several mails in /root.
I have seen something about a variable DEFAULT or something like it, used by dropmail defaulting to /var/mail/$USER, but I can't find it back and I haven't been able to find where to set it.
Also in the description of the -a switch, which should force it to go past authlib it talks about "depending on the configuration", but nowhere anything about configuring.

Hika

hika · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:48 am Post subject:

I'm looking at the useflags for standalone maildrop. I'm using the one integrated in courier. On of them besides ldap is authlib, which should be automatic in the integrated version.
Can anybody tell me if this authlib support is activated in the integrated version or how to check that out? For to me it sure looks like missing!

Hika

hika · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 1:32 am Post subject:

I think it is a BUG!
running courier-config I get:

khayyam · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:10 am Post subject:

hika ...

yes, that does seem to be a typo, I don't see a bug so you might want to report it on b.g.o. You can fix it fairly easily, create a local overlay and copy over mail-mta/courier/courier-0.65.2-r1.ebuild and edit the 'econf' section to correct the typo, then build the manifest and install ... the following should be all that's required:

/etc/portage/make.conf

hika · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:24 am Post subject:

Thanks, seems mostly straightforward, but you lost me in two parts. 'on b.g.o.'?
and 'create a local overlay'? I've never tried to adapt an emerge config, so what is meant by an overlay? Is there maybe an item in the wiki?

Ah, I read to fast. Your follow up on the overlay etc seems clear. But b.g.o? That is not the bugzilla site?

khayyam · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:33 am Post subject:

hika · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:08 am Post subject:

I added it to an old bugrepport: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33166 from ten years ago, where the user solved it, but didn't report back.
The then handlers show status retired.

Hika

khayyam · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:25 pm Post subject:

hika · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:31 pm Post subject:

It will be a few days before I will do it. I'm in the middle of a server migration and are testing things on my own private server.

Looking at the e-build of maildrop stand-alone and seeing the -a switch (use authlib) not working with me, a switch --enable-authlib might also be needed.
I'll know more in a few days.

hika · Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2014 10:46 pm Post subject:

I've tried compiling with both '--enable-maildropldap' and '--enable-maildrop-ldap' and even with '--enable-authlib' added. But the behavior stays the same. In the emerge log I see none of them used or even a check. According to the man-page the default usage of authlib can be compiled in or can be optional and enabled through the -a switch, so there is some compilation switch.
I know little about compiling and I don't know, where to find available switches.

khayyam · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:16 am Post subject:

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:33 am Post subject:

you mean extracting the package locally and running it in that tree?
I extracted it already to look at the companying text files, so no problem.

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:41 am Post subject:

That gives:

khayyam · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 1:50 am Post subject:

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:26 am Post subject:

As said I already opened the package to look for info. README mostly points to install and install is a copy of the information on internet. Mostly focused on after compilation and which I spelled out on my first install.
Any suggestions where to look further, although I understand we're out of standard solutions.
Hika

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:28 am Post subject:

The only thing I can think of is going to the developers.

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 8:25 pm Post subject:

I emerged mail-filter/maildrop-2.6.0 with authlib support on my workstation.
I copied the authlib configuration from the server and started courier-authlib.
The maildirs are available through nfs.
Sending a message with maildrop on my workstation with or without the -a switch works like a charm!
I'm now going to compare the emerge logs.

khayyam · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 8:43 pm Post subject:

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:14 pm Post subject:

The weird thing is that if I look at the ebuild from maildrop, they add a switch '--disable-authlib' to the build if the useflag is not set. Suggesting that authlib support is on by default, but is not in the maildrop in the courier package. Adding a buid switch '--enable-authlib' to the courier build has no effect. This could suggest it is an error on the courier part. On the other side, according to the user who started the bug-report 10 years ago he got it working with a change to the ebuild based on the maildrop ebuild. But then he could have been talking about ldapalias support.
Looking at the build logs doesn't seem to get me any wiser. I have to little background on C compiling.

Hika

hika · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:21 pm Post subject:

I'm now thinking , as a fast fix, to build the maildrop package on a similar machine to my server and copying the executable. Would that work with dependencies? The CFLAGs etc are the same and they are both up to date. It worked before with problems with a library.

Hika

khayyam · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 10:36 pm Post subject: