Server 5.4 SpamAssassin Bayesian files growing at enormous rate

I upgraded to macOS 10.13.4 and Server.app 5.6 to see if this issue has been fixed.

The binaries for spamassassin and newaliases haven't changed, which makes me skeptical.

Has anyone tested Server.app v5.6 to see if Apple fixed this problem with APFS and LMDB and/or Berkeley databases?

If Apple hasn't fixed this major bug in this version, I have concerns if it will ever be fixed, and leaving the last major Server.app version nonfunctional for major email and postfix features.

It's possible that the underlying libraries that break LMDB and APFS have been fixed, but I personally haven't checked yet, and still rely upon off-siting this bug to an HFS volume.

I don't think those are the binaries that are doing it. I would test postmap or postalias. Copy your aliases or virtual_users files from /Library/Server/Mail/Config/postfix and run:

/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/postmap virtual_users

or

/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/postalias aliases

If it's quick, and the resulting virtual_users.db and aliases.db are close in size to their originals, it should be fixed.

Any chance /var/log/mail.log is fixed in 5.6?

It's still broken under Server.app 5.6!

cp /Library/Server/Mail/Config/postfix/aliases /tmp

cd /tmp

newaliases -oA/tmp/aliases

ls -l /Library/Server/Mail/Config/postfix/aliases.db /tmp/aliases.db

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 16384 Mar 14 15:23 /Library/Server/Mail/Config/postfix/aliases.db

-rw-r--r-- 1 username wheel 373293056 Apr 1 11:19 /tmp/aliases.db

It's a reasonable question if this bug will ever be fixed now.

It's also a reasonable question if macOS on APFS currently supports running an email server and other open source services.

Has anyone successfully compiled and run postfix tools on the latest macOS?

A decision must be made now about whether migration away from Server.app necessarily involves a migration from macOS.

If you're using newaliases like that (without a full path), you're not definitely using the correct version that comes with macOS server. Use postalias, with the full path:

# /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/postalias /tmp/aliases

I wonder how much Apple's commitment to APFS is what caused macOS Server's downfall. I guess they had/have a few choices:

1. Convince Postfix and other open source projects to support the new file system.

2. Update APFS to correctly handle this style of file system database.

3. Discontinue development of macOS Server.

Unfortunately, they chose 3. Maybe they pursued the others... who knows... who cares at this point.

I've updated my company to 5.5 with the belief that this gives me another 2-4 years before I have to decide where I'm shifting everything. The most likely thing I can guess right now, is that it won't be macOS. Getting dovecot/postfix/amavisd/clamav/spamassassin, and even OpenLDAP, running on Debian, isn't that hard. If I can't find a app cloud provider I trust (i.e. not Google), we'll likely continue to host, but move it to Debian. We could potentially virtualise that on top of macOS, but there's really no point in doing that.

> Has anyone successfully compiled and run postfix tools on the latest macOS?

Interestingly, the version that comes with the OS is newer than the one that comes with Server (at least 10.13.3/5.5):

# /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/postconf -d | grep mail_version

mail_version = 3.1.1

# /usr/sbin/postconf -d | grep mail_version

mail_version = 3.2.2

ssh in and remove the files. Thats what I had to do.

The only fix I've heard works is to move the Bayesian files to a non APFS disk. There is a post here in this section somewhere.

It is APFS

sa_learn.pl automatically runs at that time of the day.... it's configured as part of the Apple Server App and the log /Library/Logs/Mail/junkmail.log should show it running each day.

The common thread seems to be Berkeley databases.

Wonder if there's another easy way to test this.