FC5: Sendmail error

[Paul Howarth]

On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 11:59 -0500, Gilbert Sebenste wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I just installed a fresh copy of FC5. I uncommented the network loopback so 
> that it would accept email from all. Everything worked fine, but suddenly in my 
> "logwatch" this morning, on all my machines, I note the following:
> 
> hash map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/aliases.db: Permission denied
> WARNING: cannot open alias database /etc/aliases
> Cannot create database for alias file /etc/aliases
> 
> When I manually type "newaliases" as root, it also gives me this message.
> After doing a search on the Web, others have had the problem, but I 
> couldn't find a resolution. My permissions on the files in question:
> 
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root   9961 May 20 00:10 aliases
> -rw-r----- 1 smmsp smmsp 24576 May 22 13:40 aliases.db
> 
> Those are correct permissions, from what I can tell. Any ideas? Now, here's the 
> kicker: When I remove aliases.db manually, and then type "newaliases" 
> everything is as shown above...*except* the user is root for aliases.db, 
> and I don't get the silly error message anymore. (Scratches head)...I 
> think I have owner or group permissions messed up somewhere, but I am not 
> familiar with the inner workings of Sendmail to figure this out.
> 
> Any help will be greatly appreciated!

aliases.db should be owned by root, not smmsp. Not sure how it gets that
way, but I've seen that before.

Paul.