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Hack Saw
Asked: 2019-02-12 02:13:42 +0800 CST

Opendkim won't start: can't open PID file?

  • 772

This is the complaint I get from systemd:

"opendkim.service: Can't open PID file /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid"

As seen here:

systemctl status opendkim.service

puts out this:

● opendkim.service - OpenDKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Milter
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/opendkim.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: deactivating (stop-sigterm) (Result: timeout)
     Docs: man:opendkim(8)
           man:opendkim.conf(5)
           man:opendkim-genkey(8)
           man:opendkim-genzone(8)
           man:opendkim-testadsp(8)
           man:opendkim-testkey
           http://www.opendkim.org/docs.html
  Process: 8217 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/opendkim -x /etc/opendkim.conf (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Tasks: 6 (limit: 2361)
   CGroup: /system.slice/opendkim.service
           └─8226 /usr/sbin/opendkim -x /etc/opendkim.conf

Feb 11 04:56:48 hacksaw.org systemd[1]: Starting OpenDKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Milter...
Feb 11 04:56:48 hacksaw.org systemd[1]: opendkim.service: Can't open PID file /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid (yet?) after start: No such file or directory
Feb 11 04:56:48 hacksaw.org opendkim[8226]: OpenDKIM Filter v2.11.0 starting (args: -x /etc/opendkim.conf)
Feb 11 04:58:18 hacksaw.org systemd[1]: opendkim.service: Start operation timed out. Terminating.

If I start the daemon by hand, it goes. This seems to be about systemd.

Other data:

#ls -ld /var/run/opendkim/
drwxr-xr-x 2 opendkim opendkim 40 Feb 11 04:25 /var/run/opendkim/

The only line on the opendkim.conf:

UserID      opendkim:opendkim

The default opendkim service file, from /lib/systemd/service:

[Unit]
Description=OpenDKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Milter
Documentation=man:opendkim(8) man:opendkim.conf(5) man:opendkim-genkey(8) man:opendkim-genzone(8) man:opendkim-testadsp(8) man:opendkim-testkey http://www.opendkim.org/docs.html
After=network.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid
UMask=0007
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/opendkim -x /etc/opendkim.conf
Restart=on-failure
ExecReload=/bin/kill -USR1 $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
systemd 18.04 dkim

6 Answers

  1. I fixed it by specifying the PidFile in the /etc/opendkim.conf file:

    PidFile                 /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid

    I think it's better to solve it here than modifying the systemd script. Also, systemd recommends the PIDFile option if the Type option is set to forking, which it seems to be in this service.

    This PidFile setting was present in the default /etc/opendkim.conf file. However, I replaced that file while I was following a tutorial for configuring OpenDKIM. So that is where it went wrong for me.

    • 12
  2. Best Answer

    Since this daemon runs alone, systemd doesn't need anything special to manage it. Importantly, having a "PIDFile" directive suggests that it's a more complicated service, and will put a PID into the PIDFile on it's own.

    The solution is to remove the PIDFile line. Now systemd handles it just fine.

    • 6

  3. In my case was due to the fact that /var/run was a symlink to /run. After changing the PIDFile path from /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid in /run/opendkim/opendkim.pid in opendkim.service, the problem went away.

    • 1

  4. Editing this file here does it for me. 

    /usr/lib/systemd/system/opendkim.service

    by changing PidFile /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid to 

    PidFile   /run/opendkim/opendkim.pid

    my platform is centos 7

    • 0

  5. I fixed this issue by editing the systemctl file like this:

    nano /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/opendkim.service

[Service]
PIDFile=/var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid
ExecStartPost=/bin/sh -c 'chown opendkim:opendkim /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid'

    It will set the correct permission for the opendkim.pid file before starting the service. This is the reason why opendkim said "No such file or directory". The file is not available for the opendkim service.

    • 0

  6. I solve this problem just by creating opendkim folder in /var/run/ and chowned it to opendkim:opendkim. After that the service started correctly and created its pid-file.

    • -1