Ive recently hit what appears to be a bug in postfix. But theres no obvious bug reporting mechanism on the web page. So I'll start by describing it here. If theres a better bug reporting mechanism, please let me know.
I would have sent it to postfix-devel but the web page specificly says its not for problem reports. We're not using a particularly recent version, so its possible that its been fixed since. If a developer confirms it really is a bug, I can send sample emails that trigger it. We're running Postfix 2.3.4. We're using a content filter. We recently started getting periods where postfix would just spin its wheels for a while spitting out a stream of errors like ul 27 12:43:23 mailin2 postfix/smtp[29137]: 4CBB07E8009: to=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10025, delay=137638, delays=137638/0/0/0, dsn=4.4.2, status=deferred (lost connection with 127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1] while sending message body) continuously for about 15 minutes before the smtpd got killed and restarted. Essentially it was unable to send any emails to the content filter during this period. Killing/restarting the content filter had no effect. But killing/restarting postfix fixed it which implies its postfix's problem. After fixing itself, it would work correctly for about 45 minutes then the problem would reoccur. We eventually tracked it down to a particular set of messages in the deferred queue. Whenever it tried to process them, it would develop this problem, leaving the messages in the deferred queue, ready to cause problems the next time. When we cleared those messages, the problem disappeared. The only obvious issue with the particular messages is that the headers are gigantic. About 400k of headers which leads me to believe its a buffer overflow. Its not really convenient for us to test against a more recent version. But if anyone wants to test it, I can send the "queue" file for the offending messages from the deferred queue. It appears to be in the communication with a content filter that's the issue, so you probably have to be using a content filter to properly test it. ======================================= Robert Cohen Systems & Desktop Services Division of Information R.G Menzies Building Building 2 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia T: +61 2 6125 8389 F: +61 2 6125 7699 http://www.anu.edu.au CRICOS Provider #00120C =======================================
