[Dovecot] Calling dovecot-lda from within Antispam pipe script (bash) seems to have no effect

[Bob Miller]

I got another quick idea, too; try running dovecot in the foreground.
Maybe something that isn't being written to the log will show up on the
terminal...


-- 
Computerisms
Bob Miller      
867-334-7117 / 867-633-3760
http://computerisms.ca


On Thu, 2013-06-20 at 19:00 -0700, Bob Miller wrote:
> Hi Ben,
> 
> 
> >> Maybe using something like set -e to try and get some output from the
> >> script?  
> >> 
> 
> >Adding the -e switch doesn't seem to produce any output, either.
> 
> To be clear, I meant putting the line:
> 
> set -e
> 
> near the top of your script.  I forget exactly how it functions, but it
> makes it so when a script fails it spits out a why on stdout (or maybe
> stderr).  I believe the -x argument does something useful for
> troubleshooting too, but it's been too long.  `man bash` knows all...
> 
> 
> > It really boils-down to the fact that I can call the following on the
> > command-line and it functions as expected:
> > 
> > su vmail -c '/usr/lib/dovecot/deliver -a "sa-training at example.com" -d
> > "sa-training at example.com" -m "Training.SPAM" -p
> > "/tmp/sendmail-msg-25794.txt"'
> > 
> > Yet, when I attempt to do the exact same thing from within the pipe
> > script that Dovecot Antispam calls, I receive exit code 75 from
> > deliver/dovecot-lda and absolutely nothing is logged, with exception of
> > the information of which I'm already aware (logged to syslog).
> > 
> > I am echo-ing $(whoami) just before calling "deliver" within the pipe
> > script and the output is "vmail". So, it's not as though the vmail user
> > somehow lacks the permissions required to send via dovecot-lda.
> 
> There are two things that came to mind when I read your mail yesterday.
> They are the first things I check for when my commands work and my
> scripts don't.  
> 
> The first is $PATH, I have found innumerable times when a script
> wouldn't run it was because it wasn't running with a fully loaded $PATH
> variable, and this is especially true if you are launching your script
> from cron.  To work around this I either put a PATH= at the top of the
> script, or I run the script as an argument to bash instead of using the
> executable bit (ie `bash /path/to/script.sh` instead of `./script.sh`)
> so the path is retained from the shell.  I decided against mentioning
> this yesterday because I noted you only used full paths in your script,
> which should also work to avoid this problem.
> 
> The other thing I didn't mention was the permissions on the path
> to /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver (or any other path, really).  Directories
> with no world read/execute can prevent scripts from using files beneath
> them if they don't have permissions on each directory level in the path.
> I didn't mention this yesterday because you said you ran the script as
> vmail.  However, looking at your "su vmail -c" command, I remember some
> times when "su postrgres -c" didn't work when "su - postrgres" then
> running the command did.
> 
> Probably neither of these will be useful to you, but I mention them in
> hope that they trigger and idea or set you on an investigative path that
> proves helpful...
> 
> 
> > 
> > What is the explanation for this behavior? It has to be something to do
> > with how the plug-in calls the script. Does the plug-in call the script
> > in some other context, like chroot?
> > 
> > As a final point of note, is it just me, or is the "90-plugin.conf"
> > snippet incorrect at the bottom of
> > http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/Antispam ? Those values appear to be
> > for the analogous Dovecot 1 plug-in, e.g., "antispam_mail_sendmail" is
> > used, when the equivalent directive is called "antispam_pipe_program" in
> > versions >= 2.0.
> > 
> > -Ben
>