RE: "opendkim dead but subsys locked" yet there are opendkim processes

From: Tracy Wise <tracywise_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2013 16:02:23 +0000

----------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:21:47 -0800
> From: msk_at_blackops.org
> To: tracywise_at_hotmail.com
> CC: opendkim-users_at_lists.opendkim.org
> Subject: RE: "opendkim dead but subsys locked" yet there are opendkim processes
>
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2013, Tracy Wise wrote:
> > I do still see a "opendkim dead but subsys locked" message if I do
> > "service opendkim status" (even after restarting opendkim and postfix,
> > removing the opendkim lock file, etc.). But it seems to be working, so
> > I guess that's not something to worry about.
>
> It's less critical, to be sure, but it does mean there's something amiss
> with the way the subsys stuff is working on your system. If there's
> something in the shell script that you need to fix to get it working,
> please let us know so we can look at merging the fix into the release.
>
> -MSK


Okay first of all disregard the email prior to this one, sent a couple hours ago.

I've sorted it all out.

There was actually an error message logged by opendkim in maillog when I would start the opendkim service:



can't write pid to /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid: No such file or directory

OpenDKIM Filter v2.7.4 starting (args: -x /etc/opendkim.conf -P /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid)




So apparently the shell script couldn't write the pid file to the /var/run/opendkim directory because the directory didn't exist.  The cookbook instructions that I followed (on another site, not from your docs) set /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid as the pid file in opendkim.conf yet it didn't instruct me to create that directory (a simple but very important step).  

So I just now created the directory and now after starting the service it recognizes it when I do "service opendkim status" because it was able to create the pid file.

So the problem was all on my end, as usual.

Maybe there is nothing to fix in the shell script; at least there is an error message logged.  However, apparently the opendkim daemon returns a 0 (true) value even though it wasn't able to create the pid file, and hence the subsys lock file is created.  (So that's where the system gets confused, because opendkim gets started and lock file created even though it wasn't able to create a pid file.)  I don't know if that's something to change or not, like I said at least the error message is logged (which I should have looked for and noticed from the beginning and saved me and you a lot of time).  Or maybe the daemon shouldn't return 0 (true) if it can't create the pid file, and simply fail to start with the error message logged.  

This is also why I couldn't do "service opendkim stop", simply because there was no pid file created when the service started, so the system can't find a process id for the service, to stop the process.

I think I'm now all good to go.

Thanks again.

Tracy
Received on Sat Jan 19 2013 - 16:02:36 PST