sendmail: collect: Cannot write ... Permission denied-SOLVED

[Moriah]

I am getting errors when receiving email on a new server running sendmail. The log looks like:

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Jun  9 15:40:01 rcvbox sm-mta[31606]: p59Je0f0031606: SYSERR(root): collect: Cannot write ./dfp59Je0f0031606 (bfcommit, uid=0, gid=209): Permission denied
Jun  9 15:40:01 rcvbox sm-mta[31606]: p59Je0f0031606: from=<rj@sendingdomain.com>, size=576, class=0, nrcpts=1, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=xxxxxx-5.iglou.com [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]

and my /var/spool directory looks like:

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total 0
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  root   72 May 30 12:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root  root  145 May  1 13:12 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root  root    0 Apr 19 10:10 .keep
drwxrwx---  2 smmsp smmsp  58 Jun  7 14:56 clientmqueue
drwxr-x---  4 root  cron   70 Apr 27 00:33 cron
drwxrwxr-x  2 root  mail   38 Apr 27 00:32 mail
drwxr-xr-x  2 smmsp root   38 May 30 12:17 mqueue

I have another machine running sendmail just fine, but I can't figure out where the perm error lies. It would be nice if sendmail put the full path in the error message.

Can anybody help me with this?

[jhardin]

Try changing ownership of /var/spool/mqueue to root.

[Moriah]

I'm sorry. I forgot about this stale post. I sloved this so long ago I don't even remember what the soloution was.

[zeroeth]

it looks like /var/spool/mqueue didn't have write permissions for the group

chmod g+w /var/spool/mqueue got rid of the permissions denied error for me

[lgt42]

it looks like /var/spool/mqueue didn't have write permissions for the group

chmod g+w /var/spool/mqueue got rid of the permissions denied error for me

Same thing for me with default installation of sendmail ( 8.14.4 as of today ), procmail, m4, fetchmail. It was necessary to exec the chmod g+w /var/spool/mqueue to get mail sent correctly.

Thanks and regards.

[seifn06]

Thank you for this post. I ran into the same problem when installing sendmail-8.14.9 on a fresh Gentoo x86_64 installation.
Sendmail appeared to start OK, but refused incoming email messages.

Testing the installation with telnet yielded an error from sendmail:
421 4.3.0 collect: Cannot write ./dfsB89BR0e006242 (bfcommit, uid=0, gid=209): Permission denied

And I would see a message similar to the following in my server log:
Dec 8 04:11:59 an0l sm-mta[6242]: sB89BR0e006242: SYSERR(root): collect: Cannot write ./dfsB89BR0e006242 (bfcommit, uid=0, gid=209): Permission denied

I was able to send email (i.e. fixed the problem) after running:
# chmod g+w /var/spool/mqueue

Thanks again.

[Majed17]

ok setting the folder to root:root and running the command helped, i can now send email as root.
but when i su - nagios
and try

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/usr/sbin/sendmail "email address" Great test!

i get

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collect: Cannot write ./dft7CBUn9r030612 (bfcommit, uid=1000, gid=209): Permission denied
queueup: cannot create queue file ./qft7CBUn9r030612, euid=1000, fd=-1, fp=0x0: Permission denied

in /var/log/messages
i get:

Aug 12 14:30:52 nagios sendmail[30612]: t7CBUn9r030612: SYSERR(nagios): queueup: cannot create queue file ./qft7CBUn9r030612, euid=1000, fd=-1, fp=0x0: Permission denied

here is /etc/passwd

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root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/bin/false
daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/bin/false
adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/bin/false
lp:x:4:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/false
sync:x:5:0:sync:/sbin:/bin/sync
shutdown:x:6:0:shutdown:/sbin:/sbin/shutdown
halt:x:7:0:halt:/sbin:/sbin/halt
news:x:9:13:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/false
uucp:x:10:14:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/bin/false
operator:x:11:0:operator:/root:/bin/bash
portage:x:250:250:portage:/var/tmp/portage:/bin/false
nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/var/empty:/bin/false
sshd:x:22:22:added by portage for openssh:/var/empty:/sbin/nologin
man:x:13:15:added by portage for man-db:/usr/share/man:/sbin/nologin
cron:x:16:16:added by portage for cronbase:/var/spool/cron:/sbin/nologin
nullmail:x:88:88:added by portage for nullmailer:/var/nullmailer:/sbin/nologin
mysql:x:60:60:added by portage for mariadb:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin
apache:x:81:81:added by portage for apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin
nagios:x:1000:209::/home/nagios:/bin/bash
mail:x:8:12:added by portage for mailbase:/var/spool/mail:/sbin/nologin
postmaster:x:14:246:added by portage for mailbase:/var/spool/mail:/sbin/nologin
smmsp:x:209:209:added by portage for sendmail:/var/spool/mqueue:/sbin/nologin

anybody knows how to solve it?

[Majed17]

the problem was with the write permission for the folder:
/var/spool/clientmqueue
i set it to 770 and now it works, and thanks for the tip.