Postfix question

Rick Stevens rstevens at vitalstream.com
Thu Sep 30 18:32:33 UTC 2004


Waldher, Travis R wrote:
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Bob McClure Jr [mailto:robertmcclure at earthlink.net] 
>>Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 10:12 AM
>>To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
>>Subject: Re: Postfix question
>>
>>On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 09:30:01AM -0700, Waldher, Travis R wrote:
>>
>>>Under a directory
>>>
>>>/var/spool/postfix/etc
>>>
>>>There are files such as hosts, resolv.conf, etc.  Which are 
>>
>>supposed 
>>
>>>to be copies of the /etc files.
>>>
>>>Why aren't these files just links to /etc so it would 
>>
>>always test ok, 
>>
>>>and if those files changed, postfix would change 
>>
>>automatically (minus 
>>
>>>having to run reload).
>>
>>They might possibly be hard links, but only if /etc and 
>>/var/spool/postfix/etc are on the same filesystem.  A symlink 
>>won't work in the chroot environment.  But some editors or 
>>change processes will break hard links, so that may not even work.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>-- 
>>Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
>>robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com Grace happens.
> 
> 
> They aren't hard links, editing one, doesn't show up as a change in the
> other.
> 
> So the question becomes, does postfix modify in anyway, those files
> under postfix/etc.  

No, it doesn't modify the files, but remember that postfix runs in a
chrooted environment.  Links (be they symbolic or hard) can't back up
beyond what the chroot directory is, so postfix won't be able to see the
targets of the links. That's why it needs local copies and not links
to the system files.

This is similar to setting up a chrooted anonymous FTP server...if you
want user and group names to be displayed for the "ls" command, the FTP
server must have copies of /etc/passwd and /etc/group in its own
filesystem.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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