vacation woes

linuxlastslonge · 12-12-2008, 12:01 PM

Hello. I'm running GNU/Linux Debian Etch, kernel 2.6.18-4-686, postfix 2.3.8-2+b1, vacation 3.3.0-0.2, procmail 3.22-16, squirrelmail 1.4.9a-2, & vacation_local (squirrelmail plugin) 2.0-1.4. I am having an issue where the vacation message is processed for some users, and not for other users. This issue occurs no matter if I run vacation from the command line as the user or from within squirrelmail. I checked the .forward file in the users' home directories, and they are the same for all users (whether it's working or not). The .forward file:

Code:

"|/usr/bin/vacation cpgabrand"
\cpgabrand

/var/log/mail.log shows that vacation is receiving the e-mail:

Code:

Dec 12 12:44:36 mail postfix/local[15077]: AEBA4460F1: to=<cpgabrand@mail.domain.com>, orig_to=<cpgabrand@domain.com>, relay=local, delay=0.04, delays=0.03/0/0/0.01, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/bin/vacation cpgabrand)

... but never shows that a message was processed for delivery to be returned to the sender.

Any ideas or suggestions??

Cheers,

linuxlastslonger

billymayday · 12-13-2008, 05:02 AM

Isn't the current vacation 1.2.7?

Looking at man vacation, the .forward entry should be \username, "|/usr/bin/vacation username", which is the same as what I have commented out in my .forward.

Those aside, what are the permissions of ~/vacation.msg for those users with a problem? Ditto for .forward.

fyi, mine are 644and 600 respectively.

linuxlastslonge · 12-16-2008, 10:46 AM

Here are the permissions for the user it DOESN'T work for:

Code:

-rw-------   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain  442 2008-11-25 16:43 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain  220 2008-10-29 12:31 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain  414 2008-10-29 12:31 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain 2.2K 2008-10-29 12:31 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain   43 2008-11-25 16:41 .forward
-rw-------   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain   35 2008-11-25 16:41 .lesshst
-rw-------   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain  12K 2008-11-25 15:42 .vacation.db
-rw-r--r--   1 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain  242 2008-11-25 15:41 .vacation.msg
drwx------   9 cpg_tmain cpg_tmain 4.0K 2008-10-31 14:22 Maildir/

Here are the permissions for the user it DOES work for:

Code:

-rw-------   1 testuser testuser  245 2008-11-25 16:36 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--   1 testuser testuser  220 2007-06-27 09:49 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--   1 testuser testuser  414 2007-06-27 09:49 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--   1 testuser testuser 2.2K 2007-06-27 09:49 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--   1 testuser testuser   41 2008-11-25 16:35 .forward
-rw-------   1 testuser testuser   35 2008-11-25 16:35 .lesshst
-rw-------   1 testuser testuser  12K 2008-12-12 15:59 .vacation.db
-rw-r--r--   1 testuser testuser  131 2008-11-25 15:39 .vacation.msg
drwx------   9 testuser testuser 4.0K 2007-06-27 11:29 Maildir/

As for the version of vacation, that's the version from the dpkg that I installed.

linuxlastslonge · 12-17-2008, 01:13 PM

I've discovered something new ... vacation will only deliver a vacation message for an account that is eight characters or shorter. This explains why vacation for "testuser" works and why "cpgabrand" doesn't. I stumbled upon this while creating new accounts to test with. Oh well, it looks like I'll have to either bug the author or hack it myself.

EDIT: I even compiled vacation from source thinking maybe something was wrong with the debian package, but to no avail. vacation still exhibited the same symptoms.

Cheers,

LinuxLastsLonger

linuxlastslonge · 12-17-2008, 02:33 PM

I've discovered the source of and solution to the problem. E-mail was being sent to abrand when the actual account was cpgabrand. Vacation didn't know how to handle it, so I had to place a "-a abrand" as a flag to the vacation binary in the .forward file. This solved the problem right away. Cheers!

billymayday · 12-17-2008, 02:36 PM

Interesting, and good to know.

Glad it's working.

BM