[Pkg-dspam-misc] Bug#385353: in daemon mode, dspam occasionally crashes with 'Unable to determine the runtime user'

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Package: dspam
Version: 3.6.8-2
Severity: important


Sorry to be reporting another problem without a fix yet:

i have a system running dspam 3.6.8 in daemon mode, listening on a
local UNIX socket via LMTP, feeding to clamav, and delivering to
another UNIX socket via LMTP.

It runs fine under moderate load usually, but i've now had two crashes
where it died with the message 'Unable to determine the runtime user'.
This sounds identical to me to the problem reported on dspam-users by
Helio Coelho Junior on 2006-06-13 and 2006-05-25:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.mail.spam.dspam.user/10718/focus=10770
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.mail.spam.dspam.user/10536/focus=10542

Because the errors i experienced were on a server that is in
production, i've simply restarted dspam, and haven't had a chance to
generate a gdb backtrace yet.

in this configuration, dspam itself becomes a blocker in the mail
delivery chain, and messages pile up in the leading MTAs queue,
causing heavier load when dspam itself *is* restarted, which appears
to make dspam more likely to crash in the same way as the queue is
flushed.  Both times this has happened, i've needed to restart dspam
several times in rapid succession, flushing the MTAs queue each time.

i'm going to see if i can get a backtrace from a test system as well.

I just reported this on dspam-users also, fwiw.

	--dkg

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-2-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages dspam depends on:
ii  adduser                     3.97         Add and remove users and groups
ii  libc6                       2.3.6-15     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libdspam7                   3.6.8-2      DSPAM is a scalable and statistica
ii  libldap2                    2.1.30-13+b1 OpenLDAP libraries
ii  procmail                    3.22-16      Versatile e-mail processor
ii  sensible-mda                8.13.7-2     Mail Delivery Agent wrapper

Versions of packages dspam recommends:
pn  clamav-daemon                 <none>     (no description available)
ii  dspam-doc                     3.6.8-2    Documentation for dspam

-- no debconf information