Bug 2234512

Summary:	Postfix unit start/restart timeouts when change in queue_directory parameter
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Shreyas Mahangade <smahanga>
Component:	postfix	Assignee:	Jaroslav Škarvada <jskarvad>
Status:	CLOSED MIGRATED	QA Contact:	František Hrdina <fhrdina>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	8.7	CC:	fhrdina
Target Milestone:	rc	Keywords:	MigratedToJIRA
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Last Closed:	2023-09-21 20:24:54 UTC	Type:	Bug
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Description Shreyas Mahangade 2023-08-24 17:07:56 UTC

* Description of problem:
 =======================

If parameter queue_directory is defined and postfix is started via systemctl with `systemctl restart postfix` causes timeout issue.

~~~
[root@localhost postfix]# systemctl start postfix
Job for postfix.service failed because a timeout was exceeded.
See "systemctl status postfix.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

[root@localhost postfix]# systemctl status postfix.service
● postfix.service - Postfix Mail Transport Agent
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/postfix.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: failed (Result: timeout) since Fri 2023-08-18 05:40:23 BST; 1min 9s ago
  Process: 62423 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/postfix start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 62421 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/postfix/chroot-update (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 62418 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/postfix/aliasesdb (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 62416 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/restorecon -R /var/spool/postfix/pid/master.pid (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Aug 18 05:40:23 localhost systemd[1]: postfix.service: start operation timed out. Terminating.
Aug 18 05:40:23 localhost systemd[1]: postfix.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Aug 18 05:40:23 localhost systemd[1]: Failed to start Postfix Mail Transport Agent.
~~~

* Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
 =============================================================

Producible in RHEL8 and RHEL9 but not in RHEL7

* How reproducible:
 =================

Always

* Steps to Reproduce:
  ==================

1. Make a custom queue directory and make sure correct permissions and context set.

~~~
# mkdir /mailqueue
~~~

2. Change parameter in /etc/postfix/main.cf

~~~
#queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix
queue_directory = /mailqueue
~~~

3. Restart postfix

* Actual results:
  ==============

- Unit fails with 'timeout'


* Expected results:

- Postfix starts without issue.

* Additional info:
 ================

=> Not reproducible in RHEL7. Only in RHEL8 and RHEL9

=> Upon changing queue_directory, postfix creates pid inside $queue_directory/pid/ but systemd still waiting for /var/spool/postfix/pid/master.pid which makes unit in activating state and fails when timeout (90 seconds) reaches

=> We can manually start the postfix with `# postfix start` command

=> Workaround:

1. Copy the unit file to /etc/ which is recommended while making changes to unit file:

~~~
# cp /usr/lib/systemd/system/postfix.service /etc/systemd/system/postfix.service
# vi /etc/systemd/system/postfix.service
~~~

2. Change below lines:

~~~
PIDFile=/mailqueue/pid/master.pid
ExecStartPre=-/usr/sbin/restorecon -R /mailqueue/pid/master.pid
~~~

3. save the file

4. reload daemon and restart the service

# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl restart postfix

Comment 1 Jaroslav Škarvada 2023-08-31 12:37:40 UTC

Thanks for the information. I am afraid there is not much we can do about it especially if we don't want to divert from the postfix upstream. Such custom setup already requires some manual tuning (e.g. at least setting the SELinux labels), thus we could just document it, i.e. document that the custom systemd service file or systemd override is required in such case.

The other possible solution could be to start postfix on the foreground by systemd and ignore the PIDs. This could solve other possible problems coming from the use of the forking service. But it could also bring some new problems thus I wouldn't recommend going this way in the stable RHEL, we could change this for next RHELs.

Comment 2 RHEL Program Management 2023-09-21 20:21:49 UTC

Issue migration from Bugzilla to Jira is in process at this time. This will be the last message in Jira copied from the Bugzilla bug.

Comment 3 RHEL Program Management 2023-09-21 20:24:54 UTC

This BZ has been automatically migrated to the issues.redhat.com Red Hat Issue Tracker. All future work related to this report will be managed there.

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