sendmail bombarding logs

[Sudhir Khanger]

Hi,

I ran journalctl -b to see what is causing bumblebee to fail. I see the log  
is huge. There are thousands of line and the file is as big as 5.1 mb. I see a 
sendmail line over and over. I don't think I use sendmail or what installed 
it.

Dec 31 15:16:06 fedora crond[1188]: /usr/sbin/sendmail: line 64: 
/home/sudhir/.esmtp_queue/DPfrmBuQ/mail: No such file or directory

Here is the full log https://cloud.wyffy.com/index.php/s/wTEhYPA6lS4WfD3

[Zoltan Hoppar]

Hi,

Is that possible that that way trying to send something but can't do
it as it is sendmail not installed?

Z

2015-12-31 10:52 GMT+01:00 Sudhir Khanger :
> Hi,
>
> I ran journalctl -b to see what is causing bumblebee to fail. I see the log
> is huge. There are thousands of line and the file is as big as 5.1 mb. I see a
> sendmail line over and over. I don't think I use sendmail or what installed
> it.
>
> Dec 31 15:16:06 fedora crond[1188]: /usr/sbin/sendmail: line 64:
> /home/sudhir/.esmtp_queue/DPfrmBuQ/mail: No such file or directory
>
> Here is the full log https://cloud.wyffy.com/index.php/s/wTEhYPA6lS4WfD3
>
> --
> Regards,
> Sudhir Khanger,
> sudhirkhanger.com.
>
> --
> users mailing list
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[Joe Zeff]

On 12/31/2015 03:22 AM, Zoltan Hoppar wrote:
> Is that possible that that way trying to send something but can't do
> it as it is sendmail not installed?

whereis sendmail

will give you the answer.  I think that it's part of the base install.

[Sudhir Khanger]

On Thursday 31 Dec 2015 12:22:40 PM Zoltan Hoppar wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is that possible that that way trying to send something but can't do
> it as it is sendmail not installed?
>
> Z

I use rss2email to get rss2email in inbox. In rss2email I have chosen to use 
smtp and it shouldn't ping sendmail yet I see a lot of crond and sendmail 
lines. I just installed sendmail to see if that helps.

[Ed Greshko]

On 12/31/15 17:52, Sudhir Khanger wrote:
> I ran journalctl -b to see what is causing bumblebee to fail. I see the log  
> is huge. There are thousands of line and the file is as big as 5.1 mb. I see a 
> sendmail line over and over. I don't think I use sendmail or what installed 
> it.
>
> Dec 31 15:16:06 fedora crond[1188]: /usr/sbin/sendmail: line 64: 
> /home/sudhir/.esmtp_queue/DPfrmBuQ/mail: No such file or directory

It isn't "sendmail" which is placing those log entries.  It is "crond" and the PID of
crond is 1188.  It would appear that a cron job is calling sendmail and producing those
messages.

[Ed Greshko]

On 12/31/15 17:52, Sudhir Khanger wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I ran journalctl -b to see what is causing bumblebee to fail. I see the log  
> is huge. There are thousands of line and the file is as big as 5.1 mb. I see a 
> sendmail line over and over. I don't think I use sendmail or what installed 
> it.
>
> Dec 31 15:16:06 fedora crond[1188]: /usr/sbin/sendmail: line 64: 
> /home/sudhir/.esmtp_queue/DPfrmBuQ/mail: No such file or directory
>
> Here is the full log https://cloud.wyffy.com/index.php/s/wTEhYPA6lS4WfD3

Another thing you need to be made aware of....  "sendmail" may not be "sendmail".

/usr/sbin/sendmail is more than likely a symbolic link

[egreshko@meimei ~]$ ll /usr/sbin/sendmail

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 21 Jul 31 10:11 /usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta

and then

[egreshko@meimei ~]$ ll /etc/alternatives/mta

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 27 Jul 31 10:11 /etc/alternatives/mta -> /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail

[Sudhir Khanger]

On Friday 01 Jan 2016 8:25:15 AM Ed Greshko wrote:
> It isn't "sendmail" which is placing those log entries.  It is "crond" and
> the PID of crond is 1188.  It would appear that a cron job is calling
> sendmail and producing those messages.

Installing sendmail did clear up a lot of entries.

I am not sure what is running the cronjob.

[root@fedora sudhir]# crontab -l
no crontab for root
[root@fedora sudhir]# exit
exit
[sudhir@fedora ~]$ crontab -l
*/30 * * * * /home/sudhir/.local/bin/rss2email/bin/r2e run
[sudhir@fedora ~]$ ps aux | grep crond
root      1206  0.0  0.0 128464  3112 ?        Ss   03:10   0:00 
/usr/sbin/crond -n
sudhir   21110  0.0  0.0 117008  2260 pts/1    S+   14:55   0:00 grep --
color=auto crond

crond is being run by root user. crontab of root user is emtpy. Probably some 
system process is triggering cronjob.

[Ed Greshko]

On 01/01/16 17:27, Sudhir Khanger wrote:
> On Friday 01 Jan 2016 8:25:15 AM Ed Greshko wrote:
> > It isn't "sendmail" which is placing those log entries.  It is "crond" and
> > the PID of crond is 1188.  It would appear that a cron job is calling
> > sendmail and producing those messages.
>
> Installing sendmail did clear up a lot of entries.
>
> I am not sure what is running the cronjob.
>
> [root@fedora sudhir]# crontab -l
> no crontab for root
> [root@fedora sudhir]# exit
> exit
> [sudhir@fedora ~]$ crontab -l
> */30 * * * * /home/sudhir/.local/bin/rss2email/bin/r2e run
> [sudhir@fedora ~]$ ps aux | grep crond
> root      1206  0.0  0.0 128464  3112 ?        Ss   03:10   0:00 
> /usr/sbin/crond -n
> sudhir   21110  0.0  0.0 117008  2260 pts/1    S+   14:55   0:00 grep --
> color=auto crond
>
> crond is being run by root user. crontab of root user is emtpy. Probably some 
> system process is triggering cronjob.

Don't forget crond is responsible for running crontab jobs for *all* users as well as jobs
in /etc/cron.d and the other /etc/cron.* directories.

Well, you have a cron job called r2e.  What does that contain?  It very well may have been
calling sendmail but it is probable it required "real" sendmail and since you didn't have
it installed until now it failed.  See my other response about "alternatives"

What is the content of  /home/sudhir/.local/bin/rss2email/bin/r2e ?

[Sudhir Khanger]

On Friday 01 Jan 2016 10:25:27 PM Ed Greshko wrote:
> Well, you have a cron job called r2e.  What does that contain?  It very well
> may have been calling sendmail but it is probable it required "real"
> sendmail and since you didn't have it installed until now it failed.  See
> my other response about "alternatives"
>
> What is the content of  /home/sudhir/.local/bin/rss2email/bin/r2e?

r2e stands for rss2email[1]. It's a little Python program that sends rss feed 
to your email. Fedora repos has an older (sort of) deprecated version of it. 
It will not be upgraded to its latest version in Fedora [2]. So I run the 
latest version in a Python virtual environment. It can use either smtp or 
sendmail. I use smtp and it shouldn't at all use sendmail.

I will get back once I have read content of several of those cron.* 
directories.

[1] https://github.com/wking/rss2email
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=911509

[Ed Greshko]

On 01/02/16 12:32, Sudhir Khanger wrote:
> On Friday 01 Jan 2016 10:25:27 PM Ed Greshko wrote:
> > Well, you have a cron job called r2e.  What does that contain?  It very well
> > may have been calling sendmail but it is probable it required "real"
> > sendmail and since you didn't have it installed until now it failed.  See
> > my other response about "alternatives"
> >
> > What is the content of  /home/sudhir/.local/bin/rss2email/bin/r2e?
>
> r2e stands for rss2email[1]. It's a little Python program that sends rss feed 
> to your email. Fedora repos has an older (sort of) deprecated version of it. 
> It will not be upgraded to its latest version in Fedora [2]. So I run the 
> latest version in a Python virtual environment. It can use either smtp or 
> sendmail. I use smtp and it shouldn't at all use sendmail.
>
> I will get back once I have read content of several of those cron.* 
> directories.

Well, since your cronjob is a program which performs an email function and since those
errors being reported are referencing files in your directory I would say the most likely
cause is the interaction between your cronjob and an MTA  and not anything having to do
with files in /etc.

You said that installing sendmail "did clear up a lot of entries".  So, are you still
getting errors?

As I said, the rss2email package may work best with "sendmail" as opposed to another mta
such as postfix.

Is this what you see now with the alternatives command?

[root@meimei etc]# alternatives --list | grep mta
mta     manual  /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail

Would have been nice to know what it was before you installed it.

[Sudhir Khanger]

On Saturday 02 Jan 2016 2:32:36 PM Ed Greshko wrote:
> Well, since your cronjob is a program which performs an email function and
> since those errors being reported are referencing files in your directory I
> would say the most likely cause is the interaction between your cronjob and
> an MTA  and not anything having to do with files in /etc.
>
> You said that installing sendmail "did clear up a lot of entries".  So, are
> you still getting errors?
>
> As I said, the rss2email package may work best with "sendmail" as opposed to
> another mta such as postfix.
>
> Is this what you see now with the alternatives command?
>
> [root@meimei etc]# alternatives --list | grep mta
> mta     manual  /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
>
> Would have been nice to know what it was before you installed it.

Yes, sendmail.sendmail is the mta on my system too.

I see no sendmail error after I remove the r2e entryl from the crontab. 
rss2email should not be using sendmail.

I start getting sendmail and crond entries as soon as I add r2e to the 
crontab. I see that one crond entry is made every time a cronjob is run.

Now that being solved. I have to look why I have numerous "fedora rngd[878]: 
read error" entries.

[Cameron Simpson]

On 02Jan2016 22:11, Sudhir Khanger  wrote:
> On Saturday 02 Jan 2016 2:32:36 PM Ed Greshko wrote:
> > Well, since your cronjob is a program which performs an email function and
> > since those errors being reported are referencing files in your directory I
> > would say the most likely cause is the interaction between your cronjob and
> > an MTA  and not anything having to do with files in /etc.
> >
> > You said that installing sendmail "did clear up a lot of entries".  So, are
> > you still getting errors?
> >
> > As I said, the rss2email package may work best with "sendmail" as opposed to
> > another mta such as postfix.

It really ought to, but see below.
> I see no sendmail error after I remove the r2e entryl from the crontab.
> rss2email should not be using sendmail.
> I start getting sendmail and crond entries as soon as I add r2e to the
> crontab. I see that one crond entry is made every time a cronjob is run.

Have you considered that cron sends an email if the cron job produces any 
output? Is rss2email silent or noisy? Does it have an option to "only report 
errors"?
> Now that being solved.

Probably not solved. Observe:
> [sudhir@fedora ~]$ journalctl -b | grep sendmail
> Jan 02 21:00:11 fedora sendmail[7216]: My unqualified host name (fedora)
> unknown; sleeping for retry
> Jan 02 21:01:11 fedora sendmail[7216]: unable to qualify my own domain name
> (fedora) -- using short name

You probably need to define your mail system's name in your sendmail config.
> Jan 02 21:01:12 fedora sendmail[7216]: u02FVC8x007216: from=sudhir, size=598,
> class=-60, nrcpts=1, msgid=,
> relay=sudhir@localhost
> Jan 02 21:01:12 fedora sendmail[7216]: u02FVC8x007216: to=sudhir,
> ctladdr=sudhir (1000/1000), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay,
> pri=138598, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred:
> Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

Your sendmail is trying to send email via SMTP to localhost. Which is not 
answering.

There are two probalems here:

1: You may want to make your local sendmail accept connections from localhost 
for programs too dumb to invoke the local sendmail program.

2: You definitely need to configure your local sendmail to have a better 
outbound relay that 127.0.0.1, which is itself (==> mail loop).

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson