postgrey stopping all incoming mail
 

I have been using postfix/postgrey on a home server successfully for a few weeks until recently an unknown change caused the greylisting to block all mail (white, black and gray). When I disable greylisting by commenting out:
# check_policy_service inet:127.0.0.1:60000
Then everything comes through.

I have scanned /etc/postfix/main.cf /etc/postfix-policyd.conf and /etc/greylistd/config to check the delays; all at 2 minutes.

I'm not sure if either of these mean anything, but when I read the boot-up messages it says postgrey:
"no connection to syslog available"
The other message I get is when start/stopping greylistd
$ sudo greylistd stop
Could not bind/listen to socket /var/run/greylistd/socket: (98, 'Address already in use')


Is there anything obvious anyone can think of? thanks, PJ

From your description, it seems that Postfix is the one that is blocking your incoming e-mail; the line specifying the 'check_policy_service' does indeed cause this behavior. If you tell Postfix to check if a policy server will allow the message, and that server doesn't respond, Postfix will not allow the message through.

It seems that you need to have a harder look at the way the postgrey stuff is set up, because it does not appear that a live postgrey process is listening where Postfix expects it to be listening. I commend you to the manpage for netstat, a utility that will list for you the active sockets of a particular type, along with the program that is responsible for the connection (if you ask nicely).

Your post indicates that your setup is using a loopback TCP connection as the conduit between Postfix and postgrey (inet:127.0.0.1:60000). This indicates that Postfix will send a query on that TCP port, and expect a reply there. But your log report indicates that postgrey is trying to bind to a (unix) socket, not a TCP socket, so it is unlikely that these two processes will be able to exchange messages successfully.

I am not sure what caused this change, but it needs to be corrected: either you need to convince postgrey to listen on 127.0.0.1:60000, or you need to tell Postfix to talk on the unix socket /var/run/greylistd/socket. I will leave as an exercise for you to work out which you like better, and how to alter the relevant configuration file to make this so.

Thanks for the insightful reply. I will update all when I have it fixed. PJ

45 minutes later

fixed! The change I made was in /etc/postfix-policyd.conf I changed the following line:
BINDPORT=10031 to
BINDPORT=60000
which matched the specification in /etc/postfix/main.cf
and then uncommented the previously noted line.

A real testament to the strength of peer supported HOWTOs and user groups when an amateur like me can get this running. thanks, PJ