On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 09:42 -0500, Gilbert Sebenste wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I just installed a fresh copy of FC5. I uncommented the network loopback so that
> it would accept email from all. Everything worked fine, but suddenly in my
> Logwatch this morning, on all my machines, I note this:
>
> hash map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/aliases.db: Permission denied
> WARNING: cannot open alias database /etc/aliases
> Cannot create database for alias file /etc/aliases
>
> When I manually type "newaliases" as root, it also gives me this message.
> After Googling, others have had the problem, but I couldn't find a resolution.
> My permissions on the files in question:
>
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9961 May 20 00:10 aliases
> -rw-r----- 1 smmsp smmsp 24576 May 22 13:40 aliases.db
>
> Those are correct from what I can tell. Any ideas? Now, here's the kicker:
> When I remove aliases.db manually, and then type "newaliases" everything
> is as shown above EXCEPT the user is root for aliases.db, AND I don't get
> the silly error message anymore. (Scratches head)...I think I have owner
> or group permissions messed up somewhere, but I am not familiar with the
> inner workings of Sendmail to figure this out.
>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated!
It should be owned by root. If you look at the postinstall script in the
sendmail rpm, it even tries to fix this problem:
#
# Rebuild maps (next reboot will rebuild also)
#
{
chown
root /etc/aliases.db /etc/mail/access.db /etc/mail/mailertable.db \
/etc/mail/domaintable.db /etc/mail/virtusertable.db
/usr/bin/newaliases
for map in virtusertable access domaintable mailertable ; do
if [ -f /etc/mail/${map} ]; then
/usr/bin/makemap hash /etc/mail/${map} < /etc/mail/${map}
fi
done
} > /dev/null 2>&1
Removing the .db files and recreating them from the text files is the
safe thing to do.
Paul.
