Take your stock gentoo build. emerge postfix /etc/init.d/postfix start Decide that postfix just isn't for you. emerge --unmerge postfix Let's try sendmail emerge sendmail /ete/init.d/sendmail start The init script claims to have started. There is no /var/run/sendmail.pid file. There is a /var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.pid file for the client queue runner. ps auxwww | grep mail shows: a) sendmail daemon with correct flags for the daemon b) the client queue runner mail -vs test test@example.com < test.txt "hangs" /var/log/messages shows all kinds of failures from postfix... Because the --unmerge didn't STOP the postfix process from running. So sendmail can't bind port 25. And /etc/init.d/sendmail script sends all the error output to /dev/null I would suggest some or all of the following: 1) emerge --unmerge postfix should stop the postfix binary. It's not in a run-level, it's not in the init scripts, there's no code to run it if you re-start... 2) /etc/init.d/sendmail should redirect to /var/log/messages instead of /dev/null so we can SEE the sendmail error about not binding to port 25. Actually, you'd want to do the right thing based on syslog/syslog-ng etc, ideally... 3) rm -rf /var/spool/postfix would be most welcome as well
(In reply to comment #0) > 1) emerge --unmerge postfix should stop the postfix binary. It's not in a > run-level, it's not in the init scripts, there's no code to run it if you > re-start... No. We do not start daemons when you install them and neither do we stop them when uninstalled. That's your job. We won't second guess the sysadmin/user. > 2) /etc/init.d/sendmail should redirect to /var/log/messages instead of > /dev/null so we can SEE the sendmail error about not binding to port 25. You should check the logs. Sendmail logs the startup errors. > Actually, you'd want to do the right thing based on syslog/syslog-ng etc, > ideally. And that's way too fragile. > 3) rm -rf /var/spool/postfix would be most welcome as well No. There might still be undelivered mail in there.
