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Evgeny
Asked: 2009-07-29 17:02:51 +0800 CST

postfix mailserver fails to start on centos5.2

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I've just compiled and installed postfix and set domain names in main.cf.

Unfortunately postfix does not start. Nothing new shows up in the list of processes when I issue /usr/sbin/postfix start

echo $? gives 0

Are there any log files or other clues I could use to figure out what goes wrong? Thanks.

Which processes should I look for in the ps output?

Thanks.

postfix

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    First, check to see that you're in a sane environment:

    system-switch-mail
chkconfig --level 2345 postfix on

    Next, find out what postfix seems to think the problem is:

    service postfix restart ; tail -f /var/log/maillog

    The startup failure will appear at the end of the log along with any clues as to why you're having an issue.

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  2. for starters look in /var/log/messages, it'll give you some clues on whats wrong and where to look, in most of the cases if you copy and paste error message into google you'll find either solution or some clues how to fix it

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  3. Was there a specific reason you installed from source?

    Why not just: yum install postfix

    Then you will have a postfix init script.

    chkconfig postfix on

    service postfix start

    If you need to switch from sendmail to postfix: yum install system-switch-mail

    and then run:

    system-switch-mail

    to switch to postfix.

    Hope this helps.

    Cheers

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