I've been doing slackware/courier machines for years and have suddenly run into an issue on Slack 14. Courier compiles, installs and otherwise works fine except for the following error in /var/log/maillog:

As far as I can tell, gam_server should be auto-started by courier and this is what I see on other units ( <= slackware 13.37 ) that I've done so I'm confused as to why it's not working here. /etc/gamin/gaminrc exists ....

Any ideas appreciated.

Regards, Robby

Ok solved this issue. When running in a virtual environment ( for example with mysql ), gam_server/courier needs to start using a system user ( all email is stored by courier using the same uid.gid in this type of setup ). Even though I had specified the correct uid.gid required to write to the folder that is used for virtual email, there was no system user with these details, so courier could not start gam_server. The reason it worked on previous installations is because those were non-virtual configurations, so gam_server would be started as the user the email was destined for ( which is a system user ).

Also, older virtual installations I had done were on versions of Slackware that did not include gamin so there it is a moot point - courier compiles without fam support and will not try to start fam/gam_server.