Bug#809988: sendmail: Missing /var/spool/mqueue/DB_CONFIG file causing "stat=Deferred: No such file or directory"

[David Caldwell <david@porkrind.org>]

Package: sendmail
Version: 8.15.2-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Today I booted and sendmail was deferring all locally delivered mail. I had
a bunch of lines in my log like this:

Jan  4 23:43:57 mymachine sendmail[13613]: u048N14w019302: to=<xxx@example.com>, delay=23:20:52, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=cyrusv2, pri=5394363418, relay=localhost, dsn=4.3.5, stat=Deferred: No such file or directory

I straced the process to see what it might not be liking and found these
ENOENT lines:

   stat("./xfu048N14w019302", 0x7ffe789e33e0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
   unlink("./xfu048N14w019302")            = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
   open("DB_CONFIG", O_RDONLY)             = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

On a whim I did `touch /var/spool/mqueue/DB_CONFIG` and suddenly all my mail
got delivered.

This seems like a bug. Should this file be required to exist? If so, why
wasn't it there? What does it do?

-David


-- Package-specific info:
Output of /usr/share/bug/sendmail/script:

sendmail.conf:
DAEMON_NETMODE="Static";
DAEMON_NETIF="eth0";
DAEMON_MODE="Daemon";
DAEMON_PARMS="";
DAEMON_HOSTSTATS="Yes";
DAEMON_MAILSTATS="Yes";
QUEUE_MODE="${DAEMON_MODE}";
QUEUE_INTERVAL="10m";
QUEUE_PARMS="";
MSP_MODE="Cron";
MSP_INTERVAL="20m";
MSP_PARMS="";
MSP_MAILSTATS="No";
MISC_PARMS="";
CRON_MAILTO="root";
CRON_PARMS="";
LOG_CMDS="No";
HANDS_OFF="No";
AGE_DATA="";
DAEMON_RUNASUSER="No";
DAEMON_STATS="${DAEMON_MAILSTATS}";
MSP_STATS="${MSP_MAILSTATS}";

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages sendmail depends on:
ii  sendmail-base  8.15.2-3
ii  sendmail-bin   8.15.2-3
ii  sendmail-cf    8.15.2-3
ii  sensible-mda   8.15.2-3

sendmail recommends no packages.

Versions of packages sendmail suggests:
ii  rmail         8.15.2-3
ii  sendmail-doc  8.15.2-3

Versions of packages sensible-mda depends on:
ii  libc6                                2.21-6
ii  procmail                             3.22-25
ii  sendmail-bin [mail-transport-agent]  8.15.2-3

Versions of packages rmail depends on:
ii  libc6                                2.21-6
ii  libldap-2.4-2                        2.4.42+dfsg-2+b1
ii  sendmail-bin [mail-transport-agent]  8.15.2-3

Versions of packages libmilter1.0.1 depends on:
ii  libc6  2.21-6

Versions of packages sendmail-bin depends on:
ii  debconf        1.5.58
ii  libc6          2.21-6
ii  libdb5.3       5.3.28-11
ii  libldap-2.4-2  2.4.42+dfsg-2+b1
ii  liblockfile1   1.09-6
ii  libsasl2-2     2.1.26.dfsg1-14+b1
ii  libssl1.0.2    1.0.2e-1
ii  libwrap0       7.6.q-25
ii  procps         2:3.3.10-2
ii  sendmail-base  8.15.2-3
ii  sendmail-cf    8.15.2-3

Versions of packages sendmail-bin suggests:
ii  libsasl2-modules  2.1.26.dfsg1-14+b1
ii  openssl           1.0.2e-1
ii  sasl2-bin         2.1.26.dfsg1-14+b1
ii  sendmail-doc      8.15.2-3

-- debconf-show failed