Redundant dns entries; permitting bind9 hostfile direct edits; etc.

Thanks for your response Eric. I looked in master.cf but I only found smtps commented out. I uncommented the line and reloaded the config to no avail. I did however after plenty of research find out the issue. I should of mentioned that I was running Ubuntu 10.04 as that might of helped out although it isn't specific to the issue.

Part 1 of the issue is that postfix runs chrooted.
Part 2 of the issue is a missing smtpd.conf file.
Part 3 of the issue is that the saslauthd defaults file is untouched.

Reference url: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Postfix

Now then... here are my file contents.

/etc/default/saslauthd:

#
# Settings for saslauthd daemon
# Please read /usr/share/doc/sasl2-bin/README.Debian for details.
#
 
# Should saslauthd run automatically on startup? (default: no)
START=yes
 
PWDIR="/var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd"
PARAMS="-m ${PWDIR}"
PIDFILE="${PWDIR}/saslauthd.pid"
 
# Description of this saslauthd instance. Recommended.
# (suggestion: SASL Authentication Daemon)
DESC="SASL Authentication Daemon"
 
# Short name of this saslauthd instance. Strongly recommended.
# (suggestion: saslauthd)
NAME="saslauthd"
 
# Which authentication mechanisms should saslauthd use? (default: pam)
#
# Available options in this Debian package:
# getpwent  -- use the getpwent() library function
# kerberos5 -- use Kerberos 5
# pam       -- use PAM
# rimap     -- use a remote IMAP server
# shadow    -- use the local shadow password file
# sasldb    -- use the local sasldb database file
# ldap      -- use LDAP (configuration is in /etc/saslauthd.conf)
#
# Only one option may be used at a time. See the saslauthd man page
# for more information.
#
# Example: MECHANISMS="pam"
MECHANISMS="pam"
 
# Additional options for this mechanism. (default: none)
# See the saslauthd man page for information about mech-specific options.
MECH_OPTIONS=""
 
# How many saslauthd processes should we run? (default: 5)
# A value of 0 will fork a new process for each connection.
THREADS=5
 
# Other options (default: -c -m /var/run/saslauthd)
# Note: You MUST specify the -m option or saslauthd won't run!
#
# WARNING: DO NOT SPECIFY THE -d OPTION.
# The -d option will cause saslauthd to run in the foreground instead of as
# a daemon. This will PREVENT YOUR SYSTEM FROM BOOTING PROPERLY. If you wish
# to run saslauthd in debug mode, please run it by hand to be safe.
#
# See /usr/share/doc/sasl2-bin/README.Debian for Debian-specific information.
# See the saslauthd man page and the output of 'saslauthd -h' for general
# information about these options.
#
# Example for postfix users: "-c -m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd"
OPTIONS="-c -m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd"

I have manually set start to yes, added pwdir, params, and pidfile, as well as changed the options string. There was actually a postfix users comment in there as you can see above. ;)

/etc/postfix/sasl/smtpd.conf:

pwcheck_method: saslauthd
mech_list: plain login

The file was missing completely so I created the file and added the content.

Finally you need to run the following command as root. If you are like me and disabled root + use sudo instead then prepend the command with sudo.

dpkg-statoverride --force --update --add root sasl 755 /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd

That's it. Now I don't know how tls will work out but it should be affected. At least that's as far as I can tell. This does appear to be a bug in VirtualMin though and not getting it setup properly from the start.

P.S. - My log indicated that it was trying to access /etc/sasldb2 for some reason. Early on it indicated unable to access, later file not found, then last permission denied. Once the above is done I think it stopped bothering with the file and went to saslauthd instead. saslauthd is default configured to use pam and VirtualMin creates a passwd entry for each mail user so pam works fine.

I found a solution to the issue 100%. This will use dovecot to auth in postfix via sasl. This works great and probably where the real bug is at. This does not require a smtpd.conf or a running saslauthd service (saving a little ram here).

Source: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixDovecotSASL

Modify /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

Look for auth default { and a little bit further down you have mechanisms. By default it is just plain auth. Change that so it does both plain and login. It will look like the following.

  mechanisms = plain login

Find socket listen {
Uncomment that line
scroll down to client {
uncomment that then within that section add:

path = /var/run/postfix/private/auth
mode = 0660
user = postfix
group = postfix

now then uncomment the last 2 closing braces ( } )

it should end up looking like this:

  socket listen {
    #master {
      # Master socket provides access to userdb information. It's typically
      # used to give Dovecot's local delivery agent access to userdb so it
      # can find mailbox locations.
      #path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
      #mode = 0600
      # Default user/group is the one who started dovecot-auth (root)
      #user =
      #group =
    #}
    client {
      # The client socket is generally safe to export to everyone. Typical use
      # is to export it to your SMTP server so it can do SMTP AUTH lookups
      # using it.
      #path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
      path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth
      #mode = 0660
      mode = 0660
      user = postfix
      group = postfix
    }
  }

Now then we need to edit /etc/postfix/main.cf so that it knows to auth against dovecot drop this at the end of the file and you should be good to go.

smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth

Hmm... the source doc probably did a better job. If you don't understand my changes then look at the source one...