[Case 70409] autoresponder stopped working

[bmett]

Hi guys,

all of a sudden all autorepsonder on our mailserver stopped working and are producing the following error.

------ pipe to |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/autorespond [email protected] /home/xxxxxx/.autorespond
       generated by [email protected] ------

2013-06-13 11:23:26 1UmwG6-0002Iw-PS Failed to create directory "/var/spool/exim_incoming/input": No such file or directory

Not sure why the directory creation failes. the input folder is there with all its subfolders (a-z A-z).

Any idea anyone?

Cheers.

PS: we use configservers mailscanner, if that makes a difference.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

It sounds like this may be an issue with your third-party MailScanner application. Have you tried temporarily disabling MailScanner to see if the issue persists?

Thank you.

 

[bmett]

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes I tried that. The Mail delivery still fails, the only difference is that the error now states a sligthly different directory:

Error with Mailscanner on:

------ pipe to |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/autorespond [email protected] /home/xxxx/.autorespond
       generated by [email protected] ------

2013-06-14 08:46:12 1UnGHU-0001FQ-Bi Failed to create directory "/var/spool/exim_incoming/input": No such file or directory

Error with Mailscanner off:

------ pipe to |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/autorespond [email protected] /home/xxxx/.autorespond
       generated by [email protected] ------

2013-06-14 08:46:44 1UnGI0-0001N1-CT Failed to create directory "/var/spool/exim/input": No such file or directory

So I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the Mailscanner.
Any ideas?

 

[cPanelMichael]

You can use the following command to see if invalid ownership is configured in the Exim db directory:

ls -al /var/spool/exim/db

If you notice there is "root" ownership on these directories, you can correct this via:

cd /var/spool/exim/db
chown mailnull.mail callout misc retry wait-remote_smtp

I also suggest forcing an update of Exim to see if that helps. First, find the Exim RPM that is installed on your system:

rpm -qa|grep exim

Then, remove it (replacing the package name with the one found with the above command):

rpm -e --nodeps exim-4.80.1-1.cp1136.x86_64

Last, install Exim again via:

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/check_cpanel_rpms --fix

Thank you.

 

[bmett]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it didn't change anything.
I did both of the things you suggested with no result. I still get that strange bounce back when sending an email to any autoresponder we create or have created on the server:

------ pipe to |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/autorespond [email protected] /home/xxxx/.autorespond
       generated by [email protected] ------

2013-06-17 12:45:35 1UoPRn-0001NE-7l Failed to create directory "/var/spool/exim_incoming/input": No such file or directory

Any other suggestions?

EDIT: I also ran the chown on /var/spool/exim_incoming/db/ ... didn't fix it though

 

[cPanelMichael]

Have you checked the permissions/ownership values on the "/", "/var", and "/var/spool" directories to see if you notice anything out of the ordinary? If the issue persists, you can open a support ticket so we can take a closer look:

Submit A Ticket

Please provide the ticket number here so we can update this thread with the outcome.

Thank you.

 

[bmett]

Thanks Michael,

I can't see any issues with the permissions, so I opened a ticket: 4259163

Cheers,

 

[cPanelMichael]

To update, this issue is related to a bug where autoresponders can fail on cPanel 11.38 when "/var/spool/exim" is mounted on a separate partition. This can occur when a user's shell is configured as "no shell" or "jail shell". For reference, the internal case number is 70409. A resolution for this is included with cPanel as of version 11.38.1.2.

Thank you.