Sendmail 8.12.3 warning with mailscanner

Brent Emerson brent at TECHFORPEOPLE.NET
Tue Jul 2 01:07:11 IST 2002


oh yeah, it's not a fatal error - as far as I can tell mailscanner +
sendmail 8.12.2 seems to be working just fine, but this warning is just
making me a little nervous.  I'm running FreeBSD 4.5, and starting
mailscanner from /usr/local/etc/rc.d/mailscanner.sh, which is a symlink
directly to the check_mailscanner script, modified for my pathnames:

process=mailscanner
virusdir=/usr/local/mailscanner/bin
config=/usr/local/mailscanner/etc/mailscanner.conf

pid=`/bin/ps axww |
     /usr/bin/grep '[ ]'$virusdir/$process |
     /usr/bin/awk '{ print $1 }'`
if [ "$pid" = "" ]; then
  # Restart it
  PATH=${virusdir}:$PATH
  echo Starting virus scanner...
  $process $config
else
  echo Running with pid $pid
fi



> Date:    Mon, 1 Jul 2002 21:55:37 +0100
> From:    Julian Field <mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> Subject: Re: Sendmail 8.12.3 warning with mailscanner
>
> RedHat have yet to produce RPMs for sendmail 8.12 :-(
> Can you try setting
> Sendmail2 = /usr/sbin/sendmail >/dev/null 2>&1
> in your mailscanner.conf and then try it (just try pushing a clean text
> message through it)?
>
> Also, does this happen only when MailScanner and its sendmails are started
> on bootup, or does it occur if you stop and then start MailScanner from a
> window (and then leave the window open for the first few messages)?
>
> STDERR and STDIN certainly appear to be open, the only one that appears
> doubtful is STDOUT, though I never explicitly close any of them. Is there
> any documentation with sendmail 8.12 that might help diagnose this? Why
> does sendmail suddenly need these file descriptors anyway? It never used to :-(
>
> At 21:15 01/07/2002, you wrote:
> >I've just installed mailscanner with sendmail 8.12.2 and am seeing the
> >same warning, always generated by the sendmail instance used to deliver a
> >just-scanned message.
> >
> >Is mailscanner calling sendmail with closed standard file descriptors?
> >
> >brent emerson
> >techforpeople
> >
> >
> > > Date:         Wed, 19 Jun 2002 11:03:25 -0700
> > > Reply-To:     MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > > Sender:       MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > > From:         David Closson <davidclosson at MSN.COM>
> > > Subject:      Sendmail 8.12.3 warning with mailscanner
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
> > >
> > > This warning was issued after setting up mailscanner:
> > >
> > > sendmail[9672]: File descriptors missing on startup: stdout, stderr; Bad
> > > file descriptor
> > >
> > > I have read that this is caused if stdin, stdout, or stderr are missing
> > > at sendmail startup (as the error indicates).
> > >
> > > _________ Sincerely, David Closson 209-728-8199
>
> --
> Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
> jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
> Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
>                              Southampton SO17 1BJ
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Mon, 1 Jul 2002 22:07:40 +0100
> From:    Julian Field <mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> Subject: Re: Sendmail 8.12.3 warning with mailscanner
>
> Exactly what OS are you using, and what is in your
> /etc/rc.d/init.d/mailscanner (or /etc/init.d/mailscanner)?
> I've a feeling the file descriptors may be closed before MailScanner starts...
>
> At 21:15 01/07/2002, you wrote:
> >I've just installed mailscanner with sendmail 8.12.2 and am seeing the
> >same warning, always generated by the sendmail instance used to deliver a
> >just-scanned message.
> >
> >Is mailscanner calling sendmail with closed standard file descriptors?
> >
> >brent emerson
> >techforpeople
> >
> >
> > > Date:         Wed, 19 Jun 2002 11:03:25 -0700
> > > Reply-To:     MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > > Sender:       MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > > From:         David Closson <davidclosson at MSN.COM>
> > > Subject:      Sendmail 8.12.3 warning with mailscanner
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
> > >
> > > This warning was issued after setting up mailscanner:
> > >
> > > sendmail[9672]: File descriptors missing on startup: stdout, stderr; Bad
> > > file descriptor
> > >
> > > I have read that this is caused if stdin, stdout, or stderr are missing
> > > at sendmail startup (as the error indicates).
> > >
> > > _________ Sincerely, David Closson 209-728-8199
>
> --
> Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
> jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
> Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
>                              Southampton SO17 1BJ
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Mon, 1 Jul 2002 22:14:48 +0100
> From:    Julian Field <mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> Subject: Re: Sendmail 8.12.3 warning with mailscanner
>
>  From the sendmail release notes:
>
> >8.12.2/8.12.2 2002/01/13
> >Don't complain too much if stdin, stdout, or stderr are missing at
> >startup, only log an error message.
>
> So at least the warning isn't fatal :-)
>
> > > This warning was issued after setting up mailscanner:
> > >
> > > sendmail[9672]: File descriptors missing on startup: stdout, stderr; Bad
> > > file descriptor
>
> --
> Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
> jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
> Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
>                              Southampton SO17 1BJ
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Mon, 1 Jul 2002 16:28:23 -0500
> From:    Lewis Bergman <lbergman at ABI.TCONLINE.NET>
> Subject: Re: Which MTA
>
> > For those ISPs out there using Mailscanner....what do you recommend?
> > Exim, sendmail,postfix or qmail...or is there another?
> I currently use sendmail but When I get about 5 minutes I'm going to go to
> exim. Maily because it appears to have better support for databases. I
> believe you can enter sql queries into its config files and it will execute
> them. No need for patching. At least that is what I understood (maybe
> wrongly).
> --
> Lewis Bergman
> Texas Communications
> 4309 Maple St.
> Abilene, TX 79602-8044
> 915-695-6962 ext 115
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of MAILSCANNER Digest - 30 Jun 2002 to 1 Jul 2002 (#2002-34)
> ****************************************************************
>



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