[SOLVED] MTA service restart failure (saslauthd problem)

[beli.sk]

Hi fellow Zimbra admins,
I noticed that the MTA service on my ZCS is down after every night.
In the /var/log/zimbra.log I see:

Apr 26 23:18:22 nl01 postfix/smtpd[20115]: table hash:/etc/aliases(0,lock|fold_fix) has changed -- restarting
Apr 26 23:18:22 nl01 postfix/postfix-script[20247]: refreshing the Postfix mail system
Apr 26 23:18:22 nl01 postfix/master[30962]: reload -- version 2.7.2, configuration /opt/zimbra/postfix-2.7.2.2z/conf
Apr 26 23:18:23 nl01 saslauthd[30970]: server_exit     : master exited: 30970
Apr 26 23:18:24 nl01 saslauthd[20344]: set_auth_mech   : failed to initialize mechanism zimbra

... and after that the last message about the auth_mech is repeated every 30 seconds.
Seems that saslauthd failed to start on MTA restart.
Also when I try zmmtactl restart, I get the same error: "failed to initialize mechanism zimbra".
I investigated further and found that I'm missing URL in the saslauthd.conf:

$ cat saslauthd.conf
zimbra_url:
zimbra_cert_file: /opt/zimbra/conf/smtpd.crt
zimbra_cert_check: off

And the file modification time is at 23:18, so it was rewritten at the time of the automatic MTA restart.

But in saslauthd.conf.in, there is a line (among others):

zimbra_url: %%getAllMtaAuthURLs%%

so I suppose that this URL should be filled in automatically. And it really is, but only after I do a full restart of Zimbra with "zmcontrol restart", restart of MTA is not sufficient.

Please advise why my saslauthd.conf is rewritten without the URL or how could I debug this issue further.

Using ZCS Release 7.1.0_GA_3140.UBUNTU10_64 UBUNTU10_64 FOSS edition,
some variables I checked but didn't find any discrepancies:

$ zmprov getServer nl01.coders.sk | grep Auth
zimbraMtaAuthEnabled: TRUE
zimbraMtaAuthHost: nl01.coders.sk
zimbraMtaAuthTarget: TRUE
zimbraMtaAuthURL: https://nl01.coders.sk:443/service/soap/
zimbraMtaSaslAuthEnable: yes
zimbraMtaTlsAuthOnly: TRUE

$ zmprov getServer nl01.coders.sk | grep Mode
zimbraBackupMode: Standard
zimbraIPMode: ipv4
zimbraMailMode: redirect
zimbraMailReferMode: wronghost
zimbraMailSSLClientCertMode: Disabled
zimbraOpenidConsumerStatelessModeEnabled: TRUE
zimbraReverseProxyImapStartTlsMode: only
zimbraReverseProxyPop3StartTlsMode: only

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much.

--
Michal Belica - IT consultant

[beli.sk]

Hm, no replies
This problem disappeared when I did a clean install on a different hardware.
Thanks anyway.

[justdave]

Don't know why this is marked [SOLVED], as the poster didn't resolve it, he just reinstalled. I'm encountering this same problem repeatedly on 7.1.3_P1

[phoenix]

Don't know why this is marked [SOLVED], as the poster didn't resolve it, he just reinstalled.

For the o/p that was the resolution.

I'm encountering this same problem repeatedly on 7.1.3_P1

What does the output of the following show:

zmprov gs `zmhostname`  | grep zimbraMtaAuthHost

If that's not the FQDN of your Zimbra server then set it to that and restart Zimbra.

[justdave]

It does return the fqdn of that host. And like the original poster, the zimbra_url field in sslauthd.conf is blank, and restarting the entirety of zimbra fixes it, just not restarting only the mta or saslauthd. So something is causing it to screw up that file periodically.