Incoming mail stuck in queue

[vestport4]

After recent updates to dovecot and or postfix around May-June 2011 your email may no longer be working.


First of all back your files up before editing etc. Normally I create directories in "/root" for files I am working on.

for example if I were working on postfix I may do something like:

mkdir /root/postfix-backup
cp /etc/postfix/* /root/postfix-backup

then you are pretty much safe or reasonably safe before proceeding.




Potential issues with this recet email problem are:

spamassassin and amavis may not be running.

If this is the case then one or both of the above 2 may be preventing postfix from accepting mail hence the following postfix error messages in "/var/log/maillog".

status=deferred (temporary failure)
It may also say mail "loops" or "bounces" back to myself" (This may be a config problem or rather over-written .cf file)

What I did was copied older postfix config files back that may have been over-written by the upgrade.

ex:

cp /etc/postfix/main.cf~ /etc/postfix/main.cf
cp /etc/postfix/master.cf~ /etc/postfix/master.cf

Your files may differ! Look at dates etc. and copy back older files to the default before things went haywire!


Be sure to set postfix to auto startup ex:


chkconfig --levels 235 sendmail off
chkconfig --levels 235 postfix on
/etc/init.d/sendmail stop
/etc/init.d/postfix start




If incomming mail is stuck in que and not being delivered by dovecot then you probably want to eliminate the "sieve plugin" in: /etc/dovecot.conf

Again, you may need to copy older working config files before things went haywire.

Ex: cp /etc/dovecot.config~ /etc/dovecot.config

then proceed.



First stop dovecot like so:

/etc/init.d/dovecot stop



You can check the queue by doing a:

postqueue -pv

and try to flush it with

postqueue -f

but it may not flush yet until you complete the steps below.



To eliminate the "sieve plugin" in /etc/dovecot.conf just prefix it with a hash mark like so:

#mail_plugins = sieve quota




Make sure dovecot is set to run at startup and re-start like so:



chkconfig --levels 235 dovecot on
/etc/init.d/dovecot start


re-check postqueue

Ex: postqueue pv

if all went well then there are probably no more messages in the que and your squirrelmail, iphone or whatever you use has now received all of your old messages.


You should be all set after completing the above steps but I would re-boot and check one more time after re-boot to confirm that dovecot, postfix, spamassasin, amavis are all still running. If not start at the top again or you may need other resources if you did somehting different than just took yum updates etc. or if you did not save older config files etc.


Most of this has been covered on a few diffierent sites including this one. It took me about a day to sort it all out because as usual when you can't fix it quick sometimes you start grabbing at staws and not keeping everything so focused and methodical. Regardless, I just hope that this helps someone out there fix the problem and save many hours of confusion.

Please post when new "sieve" plugin can be updated with "yum" or specific instructions how to compile. Then you can re-activate "sieve" plugin in /etc/dovecot.conf.


Good Luck!


Art

[Lionheart82]

Sieve plugin has been upgraded and is working ok.
Just run yum upgrade dovecot-sieve