problems starting amavis on suse leap 42

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On behalf of our network manager, I report a problem trying to clone our 
current amavis milter (spamassassin and clamav) from an opensuse 11.4 
(which we have been using, or its predecessors, happily since 10 years) to 
a new machine with:

OpenSuSE 42.2 - Kernel: 4.4.36-8-default #1 SMP x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
in bundle: sendmail 8.15.2-1.2
in bundle: amavis-new 2.8.1-4.6

opensuse 11 used the /etc/init.d mechanism to start services 
opensuse leap 42 uses "rcamavis start" or "systemctl start amavis.service"

when amavis is started we see in /var/spool/amavis (dir) that both sockets 
are created (the one from sendmail to amavis and the one from amavis to 
spamassassin), though perhaps with funny permissions

srwxr-xr-x  1 vscan vscan   0 Feb  3 15:08 amavis-milter.sock
-rw-r--r--  1 vscan vscan   6 Feb  3 15:08 amavisd-milter.pid
-rw-r-----  1 vscan vscan   0 Feb  3 15:08 amavisd.lock
-rw-r-----  1 vscan vscan   6 Feb  3 15:08 amavisd.pid
srwxr-x---  1 vscan vscan   0 Feb  3 15:08 amavisd.sock

however if we issue a "netstat -na" we see only one socket is in listen 
state:

unix  2 [ACC] STREAM LISTENING 711994 /var/spool/amavis/amavisd.sock

The following error message is generated in /var/log/mail when trying to 
send a mail message

Feb  3 15:13:37 dhcp230 sendmail[11625]: v13EDbME011625: Milter 
(milter-amavis): error connecting to filter: Connection refused by 
/var/spool/amavis/amavis-milter.sock
Feb  3 15:13:37 dhcp230 sendmail[11625]: v13EDbME011625: Milter 
(milter-amavis): to error state

According to the /usr/lib/system.d/system/amavis.service file one should 
first start the milter, then start amavis.

What seems to happen is that amavis-milter starts OK (as from log entry)

Feb  3 15:08:05 dhcp230 amavisd-milter[11302]: starting amavisd-milter 
1.5.0 on socket local:/var/spool/amavis/amavis-milter.sock

but then immediately dies without notice !!!


If we do start MANUALLY as root invoking in sequence

/usr/sbin/amavisd-milter.sh start
/usr/sbin/amavisd start

(which is what the rcamavis should do) then both milter and amavis start, 
both sockets are created, both sockets remain in listen as shown by 
netstat -a, amavis-milter remains running and mail messages are processed 
normally.

What can be the cause of the sudden death of amavis-milter when started by 
rcamavis ?

-- 
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html