Work Dir is not cleaned up

[Glenn Steen]

On 19/12/06, Thorsten Büker <mailinglists at bueker.net> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> since migrating our mailing systems, which consist of MailScanner
> between two instances of postfix, into virtual machines by using the
> http://linux-vserver.org patch, the working dir is not cleaned up anymore.

Thorsten, stop right there!
The piece of language you have above implies that you still use the
_unsafe_ and _deprecated_ defer method with Postfix. Please tell me
you don't...
If you do... You should immediately stop doing this. Use the new,
safe, HOLD method as described in
http://www.mailscanner.info/postfix.html amongst other places.


> The temporary directories, each named with the pid of previously stopped
> childs, are neither deleted after starting new childs automatically nor
> after stopping the whole MailScanner.
>
> Google did not lead to any hint, yet, but the changelog states, that
> version 4.50.15-1 "fixed bug where temporary files were not cleaned up
> properly". Alas instead of compiling a newer version I'd prefer to keep
> the original package (4.41.3-2) shipped with Debian Sarge on the
> productive machines.

This is indeed true, it is an old error. I'm in part guilty for both
the introduction (and the fix, along with Spike Cacti, IIRC:-)...
Because PF queue IDs aren't "random enough" for SQL logging purposes,
I badgered Jules into introducing the .XXXXX randomness... Which broke
the cleanup of the work dir. The fix was simply to add in the "." in
the match for the cleanup-able stuff.
I don't want to go digging it up... It's in the mail list archives;-).
You really should abandon that old MS version and go with a newer
one... Either by using the tarball install, or going unstable, or
switching OS/distro completely. Debian stable is just too moldy when
it comes to this.

> So, do you have any hint for to look for the reason or is there any
> reason not to stop MailScanner by a nightly cronjob, delete the working
> dir, and start it again?

You *could* do that too. A bandaid, at best, but sure... that would work too.

> thanks in advance,
>    Thorsten

Cheers
-- 
-- Glenn
email: glenn < dot > steen < at > gmail < dot > com
work: glenn < dot > steen < at > ap1 < dot > se