Re: What the heck.... Spamass-milt on my work machine

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jul 09), Derek J. Balling said:
> From my home (working) installation:
> 
> $ cat /etc/default/spamass-milter
> OPTIONS="-m -u nobody"
> $ cat /etc/default/spamassassin
> ENABLED=1
> OPTIONS="-c -m 10 -D"
> 
> From my work (not working) installation:
> 
> $ cat /etc/default/spamass-milter
> OPTIONS="-m -u mail"
> $ cat /etc/default/spamassassin
> ENABLED=1
> OPTIONS="-c -m 10 -D"
> 
> 
> From my work (not working) log file, when it encounters an alias (e.g., 
> where address@hidden points to address@hidden):
> 
> Jul  9 11:32:22 whitechapel spamd[6587]: logmsg: handle_user: unable to find 
> user 'whois'!
> Jul  9 11:32:22 whitechapel spamd[6587]: handle_user: unable to find user 
> 'whois'!
> Jul  9 11:32:22 whitechapel spamd[6587]: logmsg: Still running as root: user 
> not specified with -u, not found, or set to root.  Fall back to nobody.
> Jul  9 11:32:22 whitechapel spamd[6587]: Still running as root: user not 
> specified with -u, not found, or set to root.  Fall back to nobody.
> Jul  9 11:32:22 whitechapel spamd[6587]: logmsg: fatal: setuid to nobody 
> failed
> Jul  9 11:32:22 whitechapel spamd[6587]: fatal: setuid to nobody failed

Your real problem is spamd's inability to setuid to nobody. 
Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you why it failed.
 
> ... and, according to `ps`, it IS running with -u:

... and spamc was called with "-u whois".  Note the error message says
"user not specified with -u, not found, or set to root".  You fall in
the 2nd category.  Do you have a "nobody" user on that system?
 
-- 
        Dan Nelson
        address@hidden