Qmail is not starting

[plugged]

Qmail is not starting (solved)

A few days ago i've upgrades my server from 8.1.0 to 8.2.0. No problems, everything worked great. Even sending mail throught IMAP was faster than before.

Now i got messages that my mail client (Thunderbird and AppleMail) can't connect to the SMTP server.

When i look in Server > Services management, I can see that Qmail is not running. When i try to start the service in PSA, i receive no error message. My /var/log/messages gives the notification that starting qmail has succeeded.

But in the control panel the services stays on RED, service is not running.

Aug 28 15:38:56 tango qmail: qmail-send shutdown succeeded
Aug 28 15:39:25 tango qmail: Starting qmail:  succeeded
Aug 28 15:42:45 tango qmail: qmail-send shutdown succeeded
Aug 28 15:42:50 tango qmail: Starting qmail:  succeeded
Aug 28 15:43:42 tango qmail: qmail-send shutdown succeeded
Aug 28 15:45:21 tango qmail: Starting qmail:  succeeded

Can someone tell me where to search, or what to do? It just suddenly doesn't work anymore.

 

[plugged]

additional information:
- I can send e-mail through webmail
- I can receive mail

Starting and stopping Plesk doesn't give errors:

[root@tango root]# /etc/init.d/psa stop
Stopping Plesk...                                                    done
[root@tango root]# /etc/init.d/psa start
Starting xinetd service...                                           done
Starting named service...                                            done
Starting mysqld service...                                           done
Starting qmail service...                                            done
Starting courier-imap service...                                     done
Starting postgresql service...                                       done
Starting psa-spamassassin service...                                 done
Starting Plesk...                                                    done
Starting drwebd service...                                           done
[root@tango root]#

 

[plugged]

I've found it, not sure which exacly...

I have the following settings:

Switch on SPF spam protection:
Only create Received-SPF headers, never block
SPF local rules: include:spf.trusted-forwarder.org

and

DNS zones for DNSBL service: 
relays.mail-abuse.org;vrbl.xtreme-host.com;http.dnsbl.sorbs.net;misc.dnsbl.sorbs.net

I've switched both off for now, and now i've got the green icon at the services (service is running).

I'm gonna play with it to find it out which one is "the pain in the ***"...

 

[plugged]

Found it!!!

This is the pain in my butt

DNS zones for DNSBL service: 
relays.mail-abuse.org;vrbl.xtreme-host.com;http.dnsbl.sorbs.net;misc.dnsbl.sorbs.net

This works!

Switch on SPF spam protection:
Only create Received-SPF headers, never block
SPF local rules: include:spf.trusted-forwarder.org

 

[plugged]

I've changed my list to:

spamcop.net;spamhaus.org;dsbl.org;sorbs.net;korea.services.net;dnsbl.sorbs.net;misc.dnsbl.sorbs.net

No more problems

 

[Pagemakers]

I got the same problem. I think the issue is:
relays.mail-abuse.org

 

[plugged]

Originally posted by plugged
I've changed my list to:

spamcop.net;spamhaus.org;dsbl.org;sorbs.net;korea.services.net;dnsbl.sorbs.net;misc.dnsbl.sorbs.net

No more problems

i thought i've read somewhere today that you need to pay for that service...

 

[Pagemakers]

Hmmm, that must be a new thing because we have been using it for free for years.

 

[rcampbell]

I tried your list
spamcop.net;spamhaus.org;dsbl.org;sorbs.net;korea.services.net;dnsbl.sorbs.net;misc.dnsbl.sorbs.net


and it errored. Then I went back to mine
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org;bl.spamcop.net;relays.ordb.org;dnsbl.net.au;list.dsbl.org;rhsbl.ahbl.org;cbl.abuseat.org;spamsources.fabel.dk

and it also errored.

so I also debugged and found that I needed to take out
;relays.ordb.org

so my final list reads as
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org;bl.spamcop.net;list.dsbl.org;korea.services.net;dnsbl.net.au;rhsbl.ahbl.org;cbl.abuseat.org;spamsources.fabel.dk

hope this helps others

 

[BastianBBux]

I know, old post, but have to bring it up again ...

I had the same problem: 2 Servers (openSuSE 10.1 and openSuSE 10.2) both with Plesk 8.6.0;
On one Server (the 10.2) suddenly (without any user action) the problem occured, on the other server NOT; I had the same list:

list.d sbl.org;dnsbl.nja bl.org;bl.spam cop.net;sbl.spam haus.org;xbl.spam haus.org

on both servers!!

I tried lots of restarts, e.g. qmail via console, via yast, via plesk; a complete plesk restart, restarting the mailmgm of plesk etc ...
nothing helped.
But, while restarting the qmail service via Plesk I recognized then, that I always get two relaylocks from localhost right after restart. First I turned of DNSBL, and it worked again! Activating again shows a stopped qmail daemon in plesk again.
So i turned the list to the suggested one by rcampbell (without the whitespaces) and it got working as expected!

Could it be, that in one of the abuse lists (in my case most likely "dnsbl.nja bl.org") a wrong rule found its way into it? e.g. 'block 127.0.0.1'?

 

[trialotto]

General update for Plesk 9.2

PLESK 9.2.2 - QMail working , services management disagrees

Somehow there is a issue with correct DNS black hole lists, resulting in services management pane indicating that Qmail is not working, while it is. !!!!

Simple solutions: change the names of the DNS Blackhole lists to those who will work!

Working:
- see list of rc campbell (see this thread)

Not working:
- zen.spamhaus.org (use xbl-sbl.spamhaus.org)

Advice:
- Refrain to the list of rc campbell, or if speed is needed, refrain to xbl-sbl.spamhaus.org (one Blackhole list is less secure, but faster........and under attack of spam, this prevents the danger of being knocked down due to a huge amount of mails that have to be checked on a lot of lists.)

Note that this issue has nothing to do with the availability of blackhole lists......it has all to do with the way plesk and qmail are set up. Plesk/Qmail should not hang when the lists are containing flaws.

In order that QMail will not hang itself up if one or more blackhole lists are temporarily or permanently unavailable to some degree:


Please make a patch, dear Paralllels engineers!