Postfix email delivery fails with `error: postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/xxxxxx.xxxxx: Permission denied`

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • Email delivery fails with following error in /var/log/maillog
`error: postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/xxxxxx.xxxxx: Permission denied`
  • System has a large number of sendmail/postdrop/CROND processes:
$ cat ps |awk '{ if ($8 ~ "S*") { print $0 }}' | grep sendmail | wc -l
3578

$ cat ps |awk '{ if ($8 ~ "S*") { print $0 }}' | grep sendmail | head -n 1
user      307  0.0  0.0  81332  3348 ?        S    Dec26   0:00 /usr/sbin/sendmail -FCronDaemon -i -odi -oem -oi -t -f root

$ cat ps |awk '{ if ($8 ~ "S*") { print $0 }}' | grep postdrop | wc -l
3578

$ cat ps |awk '{ if ($8 ~ "S*") { print $0 }}' | grep postdrop | head -n 1
user      315  0.0  0.0  81296  3364 ?        S    Dec26   0:00 /usr/sbin/postdrop -r

$ cat ps |awk '{ if ($8 ~ "S*") { print $0 }}' | grep CROND | wc -l
3578

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • postfix-2.6.6-6.el6_5

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