No email after yum update

[Florisjan]

Hi,

My centos 5.4 server, made with the howto http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-centos-5.3-x86_64-ispconfig-3, ran fine until its first update yesterday.

After the yum update no more email is sent or received.
During another update today I noticed the following:

vmail homedir /var/vmail or its parent directory conflicts with a defined context in /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts,
/usr/sbin/genhomedircon will not create a new context. This usually indicates an incorrectly defined system account. If it is a system account please make sure its login shell is /sbin/nologin.
getmail homedir /etc/getmail or its parent directory conflicts with a defined context in /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts,
/usr/sbin/genhomedircon will not create a new context. This usually indicates an incorrectly defined system account. If it is a system account please make sure its login shell is /sbin/nologin.
ispconfig homedir /usr/local/ispconfig or its parent directory conflicts with a defined context in /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts,
/usr/sbin/genhomedircon will not create a new context. This usually indicates an incorrectly defined system account. If it is a system account please make sure its login shell is /sbin/nologin.

Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Thanks a lot!

the ispconfig version is 3.0.1.3

getenforce gives the following result:
Disabled

Updated to 3.0.1.6, problem persists.

I tried reinstalling postfix (as described in the howto), now I can no longer log in to squirrel mail either:

ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server.

After this, I tried reinstalling all original rpm's, related to the email system, including the configuration changes as stated in the howto.

[Doug G]

I quit doing updates on CentOS 5.3 because updates either failed or caused applications to fail. In your case, my guess is your update did what mine did, it replaced your compiled postfix with a repository version that's not compiled with mysql support, and therefore fails with ispconfig3.

To fix my issue, I used yum to remove the repo version of postfix then re-installed the customized rpm that I built during the perfect server tutorial.

[till]

@Doug: You should consider to use debian instaed of centos for your next server as the debian updater does not replace config files during updates and there is no need to compile postfix as debian has packages for postfix with mysql bindings.

[Florisjan]

Thanks for the tip, didn't quite help though. I now can no longer login into squirrelmail anymore. (see main question, added info)

Was your problem email related as well?

[falko]

I guess the update replaced Postfix. Please rebuild Postfix as shown in the tutorial.

[Florisjan]

I guess the update replaced Postfix. Please rebuild Postfix as shown in the tutorial.

This I tried, which resulted in more errors. I have changed my original question, indicating this.

Is not being able to update an install built with this howto, without problems to be solved, a reasonable conclusion to draw? Or will these problems be solved in future updates?

[till]

These problems are not related to ispconfig, so there is nothing that can be fixed in ispconfig itself.

The problem is that yum tends to overwrite config files, so when someone wants to fix it, he must change yum. As debian is able to do updates without breaking things, it must be possible for yum too.

Regarding your problem: If you post the exact error messages from the mail log, then we can try to help you fix them.

One of the problems you have seems to be that selinux is enabled on your server. You have to disable selinux as described in the perfect setup tutorial and then reboot the server.

[Doug G]

An update on my CentOS server. I just updated to CentOS 5.4 using a burned DVD installer without any update problems, but again postfix got replaced and ispconfig3 monitor showed SMTP was off. I believe yum sees that postfix is installed and gets the CentOS rpm from the repository and replaces the custom built postfix.

After the update postconf -m did not show mysql

I use yum to remove postfix, then did rpm -ivh on the custom built rpm (the one from the how-to). I also enabled the centos testing repository to install php 5.2.9

Sign on to ispconfig3 without any problem. But I forgot to reconfigure services in ispconfig3, so I tried using the ispconfig_update.sh, but that didn't allow for reconfiguring services since I already was at ispconfig 3.0.1.6. Did a manual download of ispconfig3 and unpacked it, and ran php -q install.php, reconfigured services, did chkconfig on postfix so it will autostart, and the ispconfig3 server appears to be 100% back to normal. I don't have any multi-server installations to worry about.

This seemed kind of related to this topic, if this post doesn't belong here please move it to wherever.

[till]

Sign on to ispconfig3 without any problem. But I forgot to reconfigure services in ispconfig3, so I tried using the ispconfig_update.sh, but that didn't allow for reconfiguring services since I already was at ispconfig 3.0.1.6. Did a manual download of ispconfig3 and unpacked it, and ran php -q install.php, reconfigured services, did chkconfig on postfix so it will autostart, and the ispconfig3 server appears to be 100% back to normal. I don't have any multi-server installations to worry about.

Do not use install.php on y system that has already ispconfig 3 installed, use update.php instead. The manual update procedure is described in the release notes.

[Florisjan]

Selinux was not enabled, at least when i ran getenforce it said disabled. From what I can remember I disabled selinux during server installation.
I have no access to the server anymore, it has been taken offline. Thank you all for trying to assist me!

[Doug G]

Do not use install.php on y system that has already ispconfig 3 installed, use update.php instead. The manual update procedure is described in the release notes.Thanks. I actually ran update.php but managed to type install.php above, sorry.