Mail server running but impossible to connect to it!

[vincen]

Hi

I’m in process to setup a new virtualmin to replace an old existing one. The old one is running Virtualmin 7.7 Pro on Ubuntu 20 and new one Virtualmin 7.20.2 Pro on Debian 12.
Both are setup with Postfix, Dovecot, Procmail and Spamassassin.
I have compared settings of old and new server and they are identical. Also the new server passes the Virtualmin check without errors or warnings.
When I telnet old server on smtp port I get the welcome banner of ESMTP Postfix. On new server it connect but no banner and whatever SMTP commands I try nothing happens.
What should I check ?
If I look for postfix in system logs it’s filled with that:

Nov 29 06:16:26 nameofmyserver postfix/master[632296]: warning: /usr/lib/postfix/sbin/smtpd: bad command startup – throttling
Nov 29 06:16:26 nameofmyserver postfix/master[632296]: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/sbin/smtpd pid 1601487 exit status 1

I did the test as suggested in Virtualmin doc but I get a strange error:

testsaslauthd -u info -p mypass -s imap
connect() : No such file or directory

All indications I could find on Internet about that problem didn’t fix it

Thanks

Vincèn

[Steini]

Have you tried what is described in this thread?

SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directory

Ubuntu Linux 24.04.1 Virtualmin Version 7.20.2 I have read and tryed all the topics but have no luck. … when connecting to the mailserver to send a mail The result is always warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directory the status of the saslauthd.service seems OK with : listening on socket: /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd/mux the directory of /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd is -rw------- 1 root root 0 Nov 5 15:16 …

[vincen]

@Steini

Have you tried what is described in this thread?

Thanks for the link but not better, clearly communication between dovecot and saslauth is not working:
Connect to Dovecot auth socket 'private/auth' failed: No such file or directory
and postfix has still same error when starting

[Joe]

@vincen

Thanks for the link but not better, clearly communication between dovecot and saslauth is not working:
Connect to Dovecot auth socket 'private/auth' failed: No such file or directory

Dovecot does not authenticate via saslauthd, unless you have altered the configuration. That is an unrelated issue. (And, to be more clear, private/auth is not saslauthd.)

[vincen]

@Joe

Dovecot does not authenticate via saslauthd, unless you have altered the configuration. That is an unrelated issue. (And, to be more clear, private/auth is not saslauthd.)

Thanks for clarification as I had read that dovecot and sasl might be linked. I’m then at lost on what to do or check to fix that problem of mail server not working
Should I delete/reinstall postfix ?

[jimr1]

@vincen

Should I delete/reinstall postfix ?

Why ? The error will be in some configuration file and not the binaries, so you may find that on delete/reinstall the configuration files are still there. It would be better to find out what is wrong rather than applying the ‘Microsoft user’ silver bullet by wasting time reinstalling

[Joe]

@vincen

Should I delete/reinstall postfix ?

This is always a terrible instinct. It can only ever break things further.

And, even worse, in this case, it’s not even a problem with Postfix! saslauthd is not in the postfix package. saslauthd is in its own package. But, you shouldn’t go deleting that either.

Is saslauthd running? If it isn’t, why isn’t it? Look at the status of the service, and look at the journal entries for that unit while you try to restart it for clues about why it isn’t running.

If it is running…I dunno. I can’t imagine you’d have the errors you have is saslauthd is running.