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