Issues with Postfix delivering email and removing lock files
 

I woke-up today to find my Linux server in a bit of a twist concerning Postfix and even though spending most of my day now in the Internet I have not been able to find a solution for this issue.

It seems that there is something wrong with Postfix since I get the following warnings in to the /var/log/mail.log file.

Dec 5 16:29:33 major postfix/qmgr[18710]: warning: premature end-of-input on private/local socket while reading input attribute name
Dec 5 16:29:33 major postfix/qmgr[18710]: warning: private/local socket: malformed response
Dec 5 16:29:33 major postfix/qmgr[18710]: warning: transport local failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the problem description
Dec 5 16:29:33 major postfix/master[18706]: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/local pid 19179 killed by signal 11
Dec 5 16:29:33 major postfix/master[18706]: warning: /usr/lib/postfix/local: bad command startup -- throttling

Despite this the mails are delivered to the local mailboxes but the mails stay in the queue unless I delete them manually and in /var/mail I can see $USER.lock files every time someone receives an email and those are not removed unless again I do this manually.

I'm using Debian Sarge as my distribution and the kernel version is 2.4.27-2-386.
The Postfix version I am using is 2.1.5-9.

postconf -n provides the following information.

alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
append_dot_mydomain = no
canonical_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/canonical
command_directory = /usr/sbin
config_directory = /etc/postfix
daemon_directory = /usr/lib/postfix
debug_peer_list = <mydomain>
default_destination_concurrency_limit = 5
default_privs = nobody
local_destination_concurrency_limit = 2
mail_spool_directory = /var/spool/mail
message_size_limit = 15240000
mydestination = <Mydestinations>
mydomain = <domainname>
myhostname = <hostname>
myorigin = $mydomain
recipient_canonical_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/canonical
recipient_delimiter = -
sender_canonical_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/canonical
smtpd_client_restrictions = reject_rbl_client list.dsbl.org, reject_rbl_client sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org, reject_rbl_client cbl.abuseat.org, reject_rbl_client dul.dnsbl.sorbs.ne, check_client_access hash:/etc/postfix/access
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual

Prior to this no updates were installed on to the server nor were any other changes done.

I hope someone can find a solution for this one and if more information is needed to troubleshoot this then please ask for details and I will try to produce them.

Ville