Bug#1082646: exim4 Couldn't chown message log Operation not permitted

[Marc F. Clemente]

Package: exim4-daemon-light
Version: 4.98-1
Severity: minor

I run exim (exim4-daemon-light) on several machines with nearly 
identical setup.  These are configured as "mail sent by smarthost; no 
local mail" (satellite).

This one particular machine has been giving me these errors since 1 
August.  These errors occur when "mon" sends an email (using sendmail 
which is exim4-daemon-light).  This does not happen all the time, and I 
cannot figure out what is causing it to happen.  This is a regular ext4 
filesystem (no NFS).  The emails get delivered anyway.  The directory 
has the following permissions:

# ls -al /var/spool/exim4/msglog/
total 16
drwxr-x--- 2 Debian-exim Debian-exim 12288 Sep 23 00:26 ./
drwxr-x--- 5 Debian-exim Debian-exim  4096 Aug  3 05:44 ../


user:group 111:117 is Debian-exim:Debian-exim.

There is a possibly a similar bug reported for Ubuntu at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/exim4/+bug/2045253

I can help troubleshoot, but at this moment, I don't know where to begin.

Thanks,

Marc

2024-09-22 16:25:08 1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf <= mon at mclemente.net U=mon 
P=local S=920
2024-09-22 16:25:08 1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf exim.c:884: 
chown(/var/spool/exim4//msglog//1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf, 111:117) failed 
(Operation not permitted). Please contact the authors and refer to 
https://bugs.exim.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2391
2024-09-22 16:25:08 1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf Couldn't chown message log 
/var/spool/exim4//msglog//1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf: Operation not permitted
2024-09-22 16:26:30 Start queue run: pid=289196
2024-09-22 16:26:32 1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf => marc at mclemente.net 
R=smarthost T=remote_smtp_smarthost H=mail.mclemente.net 
[2600:3c00::f03c:93ff:fe2f:e5c0] 
X=TLS1.3:ECDHE_SECP256R1__ECDSA_SECP256R1_SHA256__AES_256_GCM:256 CV=yes 
DN="CN=mail.mclemente.net" A=plain K C=">
2024-09-22 16:26:32 1ssU4q-00000001DEL-0AVf Completed