[techtalk] problems with Sendmail

Emma Natividad enatividad at eurocon.es
Thu Feb 3 16:16:34 EST 2000


Hi,

Yeah, of course this is one of the basic things you first learn about 
administering Sendmail when you create your  first users....One of the 
examples is my own account, of course I always had /bin/bash, it's been 
working propertly since I first created myself and last week it started 
witn these problems...i couldn't receive my mail and i couldn't 
login...then I created it again (exactly with the same settings) and now it 
works normally again..so I don't have a clue. Any other suggests are 
welcome.

thanks,

emma

-----Mensaje original-----
De:	Bad Mojo [SMTP:mojo at rps.net]
Enviado el:	jueves 3 de febrero de 2000 13:22
Para:	techtalk at linuxchix.org
Asunto:	Re: [techtalk] problems with Sendmail

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Feb 2000, you wrote:
> > I hopw someone can help me: I'm not very experienced in Linux and I'm
> > taking in charge a Sendmail server. Lately I'm having always the same
> > problem with users very often: a certain user cannot receive his mail, 
and
> > when I try to login with this user, the message (last login.......you 
have
> > mail, etc) appears for a second and then the prompt before logging 
comes
> > back, and if I log in as root and make su username, I receive the 
following
> > message: shel-init: could not get current directory. The only solution 
I
> > find is renaming his var/spool/mail to keep the messages, remove the 
user
> > and then create it again, and then it works normally but I would like 
to
> > find out the problem...

I may be way off here, but it seems like this user account may not have a
properly defined shell? I say that because it appears that a normal login
from the prompt or an su yeild similar problems of not finding a proper
shell. The end of each line in the passwd file states what shell the user
gets when they connect to the system. It should be something similar to
/bin/csh or /bin/bash. If it is /dev/null or something that may not
provide a proper shell, that could cause the two symptoms I see above.

On a side note. I forgot to read ahead and ended up answering a question
that got answered by everyone and their brother it seems. Ugh, sorry bout
that.

Bad Mojo <RPS Figurehead, ThinkPad Pope, SysAdmin>
ICQ:4722638|AIM:BadMojo000|http://www.rps.net/mojo
"When I need to I hit people with the largest weapon I can find: the 
Earth."


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