On 06/03/2012 21:30, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
On 03/06/12 14:10, Wietse Venema wrote:
Eray Aslan:
On Tue, Mar 06, 2012 at 11:48:35AM -0500, Wietse Venema wrote:
I think that making everyone wait would be another example of
well-meaning people doing things that give Postfix a bad reputation.
postfix start exits successfully but postfix doesn't work, resulting in a
WTF moment for the user. I am not sure if this is a recommended way to
start a daemon. It surprises them - hence the original email.
According to the original complaint, no error was logged, and the
system claimed that the mail system was running.
If they had looked in the right logfile, and if they had used the
"postfix status" command, all this WTF would have been unnecessary.
They also claimed they had to to reboot their system to clear up
the problem.
All this indicates that they have no clue. Going for the lowest
common denominator is not sufficient moditivation to make changes
that cause everyone else to suffer.
It's not really his fault. This is what the startup message looks like:
backup2 ~ # /etc/init.d/postfix start
* Starting postfix (/etc/postfix)... [ ok ]
If postfix has failed to actually start, you get the same message. Moreover,
backup2 ~ # killall -9 /usr/lib64/postfix/master
backup2 ~ # /etc/init.d/postfix start
* WARNING: postfix has already been started
backup2 ~ # /etc/init.d/postfix status
* status: started
This is not ideal, but I wouldn't say it should necessarily be fixed,
either. Right now the problem is easy to understand: half of the time on
Gentoo, the startup "OK" is meaningless. Everyone knows this, and
figures out how to deal with it quickly:
backup2 ~ # /etc/init.d/postfix stop
* Stopping postfix (/etc/postfix)... [ !! ]
* ERROR: postfix failed to stop
backup2 ~ # /etc/init.d/postfix zap
* Manually resetting postfix to stopped state
backup2 ~ # /etc/init.d/postfix start
* Starting postfix (/etc/postfix)... [ ok ]
If we try to fix it with magic (e.g. wrapping 'postfix status'),
a) We require more developer time
b) Some easy failure modes get nicer
c) Many tricky failures get worse
i dont care about any init scripts on whatever else then when there is
this specific problem of mismatching binding an ip that dosnt exist to
be checked using the "postfix check" method on terminal and not only on log.
by writing the bug i do hope this simple guy that will look for the
problem will understand what could he missed.
Thanks,
Eliezer
So the benefit is not clear-cut.
