Urgent Help Needed -- [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file

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Urgent Help Needed -- [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file

My Xserve G5 running OS X Server 10.3.9 experienced a power outage this afternoon. I've had 100% up time since it went online in early October 2005 until the power outage today. Apparently something got corrupted.

Following the power outage this afternoon, the server restarted and came right back online as it was set to do. Web services seem to be fine. However one mailbox in the mail system apparently was corrupted somehow, and now I get the following error when I try to check mail:

POP server said: -ERR [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file

Also it appears my mailing lists are not working. Running mailing lists on Mailman are the main function this server is used for.

I'm at a loss as to what to do ... can someone suggest what might be the problem and how to repair it?

Xserve G5 single processor, two 80GB drives Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Jan 21, 2006 9:22 PM

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Answer 1

davidh

Level 4

1,896 points

Jan 22, 2006 4:50 AM in response to Robert Bergey

Start by running repair permissions on the system drive using Disk Utility.

Prior to doing so, you could see how things look via the following command in the Terminal:

sudo ls -al /var/spool/imap/user/rbergey

(if your shortname on the server is "rbergey", if not substitute with the correct name there)

which should look like:

-rw------- 1 cyrus mail 2350 Jan 20 19:19 413.
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail 3065 Jan 20 20:42 414.
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail 2600 Jan 21 22:30 415.
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail 8532 Jan 21 22:30 cyrus.cache
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail 157 Jun 21 2005 cyrus.header
-rw------- 1 cyrus mail 436 Jan 21 22:30 cyrus.index

The numbers at the end are (each) a message, and the numbers in your case will not match those listed here.

After having run repair permissions, you may need to do a mailmain (used for mailing lists) permissions adjustment via:

sudo /usr/share/mailman/bin/check_perms -f

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Answer 2

Jan 22, 2006 1:35 PM in response to davidh

Thanks, David -- can't believe I didn't think to try repairing permissions on the Xserve to begin with. In the four months it's been online, I've never done that (I do it on my laptop regularly). Anyway ... that seems to have solved most of the problems. As soon as I repaired permissions and restarted, the mailing lists picked right up where they left off, and seem to be working just fine now.

However, the one mailbox that was the first evidence of the problems was still unreadable. Fortunately most of the mail I get in that box is just monitoring other mailing lists, nothing critical. So, for lack of time and further expertise in repairing it, I just deleted it, and recreated it. Now it works fine. I had tried that last night, but it didn't work -- it wouldn't delete properly -- I'm sure that was related to the permissions problems, as I had no trouble deleting it and recreating it after repairing permissions.

Thanks so much for your help! I'm back in business.

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Answer 3

davidh

Level 4

1,896 points

Jan 22, 2006 9:56 PM in response to Robert Bergey

Great 🙂

In the future, you should do a Cyrust reconstruct.

This article is for 10.3:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107996

So, for each instance of "cyrus", substitute: cyrusimap
if you're running 10.4 server.

ie:
su root
serveradmin stop mail
mv /var/imap /var/imap.old
mkdir /var/imap
/usr/bin/cyrus/tools/mkimap
chown -R cyrusimap:mail /var/imap
sudo -u cyrusimap /usr/bin/cyrus/bin/reconstruct -i
serveradmin start mail
exit

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