incorrect .qmail on home directory... what would happen?

[hookahmasta]

I'm a relative newbie at qmail, and here's what I did....
While changing settings, I accidentally changed someone's .qmail file in their home directory, so that everything in there's commented out....

It was....

# ./Maildir/
| /usr/bin/procmail -p

I changed it to....
# ./Maildir/
# | /usr/bin/procmail -p

The day after, the user complained that he's not getting mail, then I noticed the mistake, and changed it back... now it's back working again...

My question is this... what happened to all the e-mail during the the it had the wrong .qmail setting. Does it just disappear into thin air?

I've done some test.... I did the same thing to my account, to purpose break my system and sent out test messages to myself. Then I checked my send log on my qmail. It reported that the message delivery was successful! There is only one difference, though, and i'll post it right here....

with a good .qmail (and successful deliver)

@4000000042f3b40f1fd1512c info msg 239409: bytes 3205 from <e-mail address> qp 2486 uid 1001
@4000000042f3b40f227b0c9c starting delivery 1791: msg 239409 to local e-mail address
@4000000042f3b40f227b2bdc status: local 1/10 remote 0/20
@4000000042f3b40f24752334 delivery 1791: success: did_1+0+0/

with a bad .qmail (and didn't receive)

@4000000042f3b4e92255b21c info msg 239414: bytes 3205 from <e-mail address> qp 2823 uid 1001
@4000000042f3b4e924ff0be4 starting delivery 1807: msg 239414 to local e-mail address
@4000000042f3b4e924ff2f0c status: local 1/10 remote 0/20
@4000000042f3b4e925242bcc delivery 1807: success: did_0+0+0/
@4000000042f3b4e925281f84 status: local 0/10 remote 0/20
@4000000042f3b4e92528ee8c end msg 239414

 

[thedaver]

Your default delivery will affect this and you may find that the mail has been delivered into the user's homdir in "mbox" format.

If memory serves, try looking for "~/Mail" as a file. It should be a text file that contains the mail delivered while "./Maildir/" was not in force.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[hookahmasta]

I just checked the defaultdelivery, residing in /var/qmail/control, and it has always been

./Maildir/

some users doesn't even have a .qmail file in their home directory, and their e-mail comes in to their Maildir.... so you'd think it would just use that, right? Nope, it seems that a bad .qmail file in their home directory does make it disappear! Anyone had any ideas? I tried looking for the mail file themselves in other directories, but no luck....

 

[thedaver]

No sorry, I meant if you have a default delivery account set up for the domain. Mail would potentially be considered undeliverable to the user but would be deliverable to the catchall account.

Users don't need a .qmail file since you've setup the defaultdelivery.

If you have a corrupt/misconfigured .qmail in the homedir you WILL have unexpected results.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[hookahmasta]

OK, I know that I have unexpected results.... But do you know what it is? Becuase, the user who sent the mail to that box does not get a failure notice.... it seems that the e-mail just vanishes into thin air! I want to know if anyone experienced that problem, and if there's any way of getting that e-mail back....

 

[BIS]

If there is no user or .qmail file, my guess is that the mail would be delivered as to instructions in .qmail-default. Possibly they have been delivered to postmaster, but check the file, could be they were simply dropped/deleted.

 

[thedaver]

Qmail HAS delivered the mail in accordance with your configuration, unless you are supressing all outbound failure notices.

As BIS rightly points out, which I failed to articulate well enough, the mail is SOMEWHERE. Either in an unexpected account or in an unexpected format (mbox).

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/