[wplug-bsd] new install: postfix

Brandon Kuczenski brandon at 301south.net
Mon Jul 19 23:45:41 EDT 2004


I don't understand what is going on.

A week ago at the installfest I installed FreeBSD 4.10 on a fresh box and 
took another step further from institutionalized corporatism and into a 
world where my computer is in my control.

or so I hoped/thought.  

I've enjoyed working with FreeBSD so far but I am just stuck.  I installed 
postfix from the port, except now everything seems to be completely 
hosed.  I don't know what more to say except that on bootup I get this 
error: 

Jul 19 23:16:33 ocean postfix/sendmail[102]: fatal: usage: sendmail [options]

Here's what I did.  The install included sendmail by default.  I installed 
postfix from the port, modified the config file (main.cf -- I didn't touch 
master.cf because I couldn't find anything that told me to) to my liking, 
and then took a week vacation.  When I returned (effectively today) I 
wanted to really start postfix.  For reasons that can be best described 
as "grasping at straws" I ran "/usr/ports/mail/postfix/make deinstall" 
and then make install, this time answering 'y' to the question of 
whether I want to modify mailer.conf.

I modified /etc/rc.conf to include:  
sendmail_enable="NO" 

and then created a link in /usr/local/etc/rc.d: 
# ln -s /usr/local/sbin/postfix postfix.sh

which I thought meant that the program would start up by itself.

But it doesn't, and the only hint I get is that error on bootup, and the 
fact that when I try to send mail PINE tells me "error 421 SMTP connection 
went away!"

Running 'mail b at anearbyhost' works (b at anearbyhost gets his mail).

I have utterly no idea what to do next, no idea what logs to look at or 
what services to start.  The fact that the postfix executable is also 
called 'sendmail' is an act of devilish insanity so perverse that I can 
only laugh at the frustration that is creeping up, like bile, in my 
throat.  Please, please help me.

-Brandon





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