Bug#929798: exim4-base: /etc/cron.daily/exim4-base will not rotate paniclog if it is 100% noise.

Kev Green kyrian at ore.org
Fri May 31 11:12:44 BST 2019


Package: exim4-base
Version: 4.84.2-2+deb*
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Reporting this bug on a personal system because I observed it at work, but my
current employer requires some confidentiality. Bug seems to apply in multiple
package versions.

There appears to be a logical error in /etc/cron.daily/exim4-base such that it
will not rotate /var/log/exim4/paniclog if it is full of *only* lines that
are ignored by virtue of $E4BCD_PANICLOG_NOISE. I think the block that
performs log rotation should be contingent only on the log having something in
it, not on there being any non-noise lines in it, that would be alerted about,
to make this bug go away.

So I think those 3 lines ought to be moved down below the 'fi' immediately
beneath them.

*** Please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?

Stupid emails causing paniclog to be full of stuff ignored by setting 
$E4BCD_PANICLOG_NOISE. Which results in the 'grep -vq' call returning a
failure exit code.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

Doing $E4BCD_PANICLOG_NOISE to begin with was one mitigation, but it does not
respect the 'once' mode of $E4BCD_WATCH_PANICLOG so warning emails keep coming
until manual intervention is done.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

Not quite enough.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

Paniclog to rotate and thus to only receive one email about the same errors.

*** End of the template - remove these lines ***

-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.80 #3 built 10-Feb-2018 15:37:27
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge, 1995 - 2012
(c) The Exim Maintainers and contributors in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file, 2007 - 2012
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 5.1.29: (October 25, 2011)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages DKIM
Lookups (built-in): lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmjz dbmnz dnsdb dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.11
  APT prefers oldoldstable
  APT policy: (500, 'oldoldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages exim4-base depends on:
ii  adduser                        3.113+nmu3
ii  cron                           3.0pl1-124
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]          1.5.49
ii  exim4-config [exim4-config-2]  4.80-7+deb7u6
ii  libc6                          2.13-38+deb7u12
ii  libdb5.1                       5.1.29-5+deb7u1
ii  lsb-base                       4.1+Debian8+deb7u1
ii  netbase                        5.0

Versions of packages exim4-base recommends:
ii  bsd-mailx [mailx]  8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1+deb7u1
ii  perl-modules       5.14.2-21+deb7u5
ii  psmisc             22.19-1+deb7u1

Versions of packages exim4-base suggests:
ii  bsd-mailx [mail-reader]          8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1+deb7u1
pn  exim4-doc-html | exim4-doc-info  <none>
pn  eximon4                          <none>
ii  file                             5.11-2+deb7u9
ii  mutt [mail-reader]               1.5.21-6.2+deb7u3
ii  openssl                          1.0.1t-1+deb7u4
pn  spf-tools-perl                   <none>
pn  swaks                            <none>

-- debconf information:
  exim4/purge_spool: false
  exim4-base/drec:



More information about the Pkg-exim4-maintainers mailing list