Procmail battles

[Justin Willmert]

Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 09:42 -0500, Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
>   
>> On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 12:52 +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sat, 2006-05-13 at 20:52 -0500, Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Sat, 2006-05-13 at 21:42 -0400, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>  > On Sat, 2006-05-13 at 14:48, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
>>>>>  > 
>>>>>  > > LOGFILE=/root/procmail.log
>>>>>  > > LOGABSTRACT=yes
>>>>>  > > VERBOSE=1
>>>>>  > > 
>>>>>  > > and send mail to "root" then I actually see an abstract appended to
>>>>>  > > /root/procmail.log which is consistent with the procmail man page in
>>>>>  > > that it says $HOME/.procmailrc will get processed.  I leaped,
>>>>>  > > incorrectly it would appear, to the conclusion that $HOME referred to
>>>>>  > > the mail target.  It must be referring to the User running procmail,
>>>>>  > > i.e. "root" on a stock Fedora Core system, which makes considerable
>>>>>  > > sense.  This, I believe, is the crux of my battles.
>>>>>  > 
>>>>>  > $HOME is the expansion of the environment variable HOME, which
>>>>>  > is set to the 6th field of the user's /etc/passwd file entry,
>>>>>  > i.e. their home directory.  This happens in a straightforward
>>>>>  > way during logins and is emulated in procmail runs. 
>>>>>  > 
>>>>>  > > So that raises the question: how does one configure mail (sendmail or
>>>>>  > > otherwise) on a stock Fedora Core system so that ~User/.procmailrc
>>>>>  > > will be processed for all User's on the system?
>>>>>  > 
>>>>>  > ~user is expanded in a shell to the same thing as $HOME would be for
>>>>>  > that user.  Sendmail should, by default, use procmail for everyone
>>>>>  > which should then process their .procmailrc but it will not trust
>>>>>  > files where the permissions allow write access by others.
>>>>>
>>>>> Excellent.  This insight has led to the real culprit: selinux.
>>>>> Disabling selinux leads to FC4 level behavior so it is a safe bet that
>>>>> a more stringent FC5 selinux setting is what is ailing me.  Now,
>>>>> ideally, I should be able to google FC5, selinux and mail and get some
>>>>> insight.  Not so.  Anyone have a reference where I can learn what
>>>>> FC5 now expects from sendmail/procmail to make selinux happy?  The
>>>>> entries in /var/log/messages are not exactly real informative:
>>>>>
>>>>> May 13 21:22:04 roamer kernel: audit(1147569724.815:39): avc:  denied  { search } for  pid=26417 comm="procmail" name="log" dev=dm-0 ino=4128796 scontext=system_u:system_r:procmail_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r:var_log_t:s0 tclass=dir
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -pmr
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>> I am having the same problem with FC5 and selinux.  My system worked
>>>> fine with FC4 but is failing with FC5.  I am using procmail to store
>>>> spam in created directory ie /savedrwxr-xr-x  root     mail     root:object_r:root_t             .
>>>>         
>>     
>>> /home/$USER/Mail/spam.  When I turn
>>>       
>>>> selinux off I can get procmail to work perfectly, but when I turn
>>>> selinux back on it fails to be able to write in this directory.  I know
>>>> very little about selinux and would appreciate some references as to
>>>> changes from FC4 to FC5 as well.
>>>>         
>>> The out-of-the-box selinux policy for FC5 was somewhat broken for
>>> procmail, particularly if you wanted to forward mail as an action.
>>>
>>> Paul, what log files are you trying to write, and what the the "adv:
>>> denial" messages you see in /var/log/messages when procmail tries to
>>> write to this log?
>>>
>>> Gregory, is /save/home/$USER the home directory for $USER?
>>> What's the output of:
>>> $ ls -laZ /save/home
>>>
>>> Paul.
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> Paul,
>>
>> Thanks for your help.  Is there a way to modify the procmail policy in
>> selinux?
>>
>> The above directory is not the home directory of the user.  When I
>> originally designed the software I created a directory system outside of
>> the /home, but $USER does represent the name of the user.  Here is a
>> partial listing of ls -laZ /save/home
>>
>> drwxr-xr-x  root     root     root:object_r:root_t             ..
>> drwxr-xr-x  bkgrndch bkgrndch root:object_r:root_t             bkgrndchk
>> drwxr-xr-x  claire   claire   root:object_r:root_t             claire
>> drwxr-xr-x  clamav   clamav   root:object_r:root_t             clamav
>> drwxr-xr-x  greg     greg     root:object_r:root_t             greg
>> drwxr-xr-x  jesse    jesse    root:object_r:root_t             jesse
>> drwxr-xr-x  mail     mail     root:object_r:root_t             lost
>> +found
>> drwxr-xr-x  mailwoma mailwoma root:object_r:root_t             mailwoman
>> drwxr-xr-x  melissa  melissa  root:object_r:root_t             melissa
>>
>> Thanks again for your help!
>>
>> Greg
>>
>>     
> I do not run selinux in strict mode so I have not seen your problem.
> However, the default mail spool directory (/var/spool/mail) has this,
> and maybe the context permissions need to be changed to match.
>
> drwxrwxr-x  root     mail     system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t   .
> drwxr-xr-x  root     root     system_u:object_r:var_spool_t    ..
> -rw-rw----  jeff     mail     system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t   jeff
> -rw-------  root     root     system_u:object_r:mail_spool_t   root
> [
I would expect giving the directories a user_home_dir_t type would also 
work.

Justin