postfix: Process did not exit cleanly, returned 1 with signal 0

[Glenn Steen]

2008/6/5 Dave Jenkins <davejenx at googlemail.com>:
> Hello,
>
> I'm new to the list . I have successfully run MailScanner with
> sendmail for a couple of years, now setting it up with postfix on
> another server.
>
> MailScanner & postfix have mostly been running happily for a few
> weeks, averaging about 5 msgs/min. But on two occasions we've had
> defunct MailScanner processes and the error "postfix: Process did not
> exit cleanly, returned 1 with signal 0".
>
> Once the error & the defunct processes started appearing, there was an
> ever-growing "Found N messages waiting" (got to 480 first time) and no
> mail getting through. /var/log/maillog revealed that the same batch of
> 30 messages was being scanned over & over.
>
> Disabling virus scanning in MailScanner.conf, didn't help. Neither did
> removing all "yes" entries from
> /etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.checking.rules, leaving default "no". (I
> restarted MailScanner after each change.) Finally I turned off
> scanning (Scan Messages = no) and this allowed the queue to clear.
>
> I then switched scanning, virus and spamassassin back on (i.e.
> restored previous config) and it then ran fine. I'm wondering if it
> was a peculiarity of one of the messages that caused MailScanner to
> crash.
>
> The second time it happened, before clearing the queue I took a copy
> of /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming; will that help in debugging the
> problem? If so, what should I do with it and if not, what should I do
> next time it happens?
>
> Software:
> Centos 5
> postfix-2.3.3-2
> mailscanner-4.69.8-1 from rpm from mailscanner.info
> clamav-0.93-2.el5.rf
> spamassassin-3.1.9-1.el5
>
> Hardware:
> CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor
> RAM: 2G
> DIsks: 2 x 500GB SATA in software RAID-1
>
> Thanks,
> Dave.

Next time it happens, look in the hold queue, the oldest <batch
size... usually 30 or so> messages, to see if you have a problem
there. If it were non-queue files fouling things up, doing what you
did would likely not have cleared things up, so it might not be the
usual razor agent log misplaced in the hold directory... More like
some subtle permission thing or subcomponent "borking totally" on a
specific mail.
Trick is to find what part and what to do with it:-):-)

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