daemontools

April 5, 2018 Roberto Puzzanghera 18 comments

daemontools is a collection of tools for managing UNIX services. It monitors qmail services and saves error messages to one or more logs.

First of all, let's create the folder which will host qmail, daemontools and ucspi-tcp:

mkdir /var/qmail

In this guide I will assume that all the source packages have been downloaded into the /usr/local/src folder.

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://cr.yp.to/daemontools/daemontools-0.76.tar.gz
wget https://notes.sagredo.eu/files/qmail/patches/daemontools/daemontools-0.76.errno.patch
wget https://notes.sagredo.eu/files/qmail/patches/daemontools/multilog_filesize_limit.patch

The multilog_filesize_limit patch (thanks to Sam Tang) extends the file log size limit to 100MB (default is 16MB).

cd /var/qmail
tar xzf /usr/local/src/daemontools-0.76.tar.gz
cd admin
ln -s daemontools-0.76 daemontools
chmod 1755 .

So you have daemontools in /var/qmail/admin/daemontools

Now let's apply the patches and install

cd daemontools
patch -p1 < /usr/local/src/daemontools-0.76.errno.patch
patch -p1 < /usr/local/src/multilog_filesize_limit.patch
package/install

Note that package/install will also add a line to the end of /etc/inittab to automatically launch scanboot (if it doesn’t already find the line there).

Add the "clear" service, so that you can easily clear the readproctitle service errors line:

cd ../
mkdir clear
touch clear/down

cat > clear/run << __EOF__
#!/bin/sh
yes '' | head -4000 | tr '\n' .
__EOF__

chmod +x clear/run

Finally, since this number of directory levels bothers me:

ln -s /var/qmail/admin/daemontools/command /command

That way, I have almost everything in /var/qmail, except for /command and /service, which are just symbolic links.

Comments

suggestion to insert install of build-essentials etc on this page.

is it an idea to put the following already here instead of on page installing and configuring vpopmail?:

apt install build-essential autoconf automake libmariadb-dev libmariadb-dev-compat

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suggestion to insert install of build-essentials etc on this page.

I created a page with the preinstallation tasks, where this and other preliminary tasks are covered. Fill free to post other hints 

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suggestion to insert install of build-essentials etc on this page.

ok, inserted

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make: not found

Hi everybody .

i had a problem need your help :

- when i run a command line :

# package/install 

i see : 

Linking ./src/* into ./compile...
Compiling everything in ./compile...
package/compile: 20: exec: make: not found . 

help me , pls .

thanks.

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make: not found

I think that you should install a C compiler. Please refer to your distribution's documentation for the purpose

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attribute eXecute to "run" file

Hello,

I´m doing a procedure to install qmail to CentOS 8 (systemd)

run file gets 644 attribute, should we change to 744 ?

Thanks for your work !

Marco Varanda

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attribute eXecute to

yes

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Supervise not running on debian

If you receive error: Error supervise not running
It's because daemontools/svscanboot is not starting from sysvinit inittab.

To start from systemd:

cat > /lib/systemd/system/daemontools.service << __EOF__
[Unit]
Description=Daemontools service supervision

[Service]
ExecStart=/command/svscanboot /etc/service/
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
__EOF__

systemctl enable daemontools.service
systemctl status daemontools

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Broken link

qmail.org  is offline, change:

wget http://www.qmail.org/netqmail-1.06.tar.gz

to

wget https://notes.sagredo.eu/files/qmail/tar/netqmail-1.06.tar.gz

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patch of multilog file size limit

Hi,

This is the little multilog patch I would like to share.

By default multilog only support max 16MB log file, for my email server, 16MB only can save 5 hours log, so I made this little patch, and change multilog file limit to 100MB, here how to apply:

cd /usr/local/src
wget https://www.phpini.com/files/multilog_filesize_limit.patch
cd /var/qmail/admin/daemontools
patch -p1 < /usr/local/src/multilog_filesize_limit.patch
package/install

and then update log/run file/s, now can assign file size to s104857600 (100MB).

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patch of multilog file size limit

thank you, Sam.. I'll add it asap

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clear service

the creation of clear service is non understandeable and not well described

cat > clear/run < 

syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

what must do run to clear ?

no link creation for service clear

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clear service

thank you, corrected

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But how do you set the PATH so daemontools can run properly?

I tried installing daemontools exactly as outlined above.  But qmailctl start fails because it can't find svc, svok, etc.  I researched on the web, and it appears that the issue is with daemontools not being found in the PATH.  I've tried updating the path in /etc/profile, and in /etc/inittab (when launching svscan).  Although ps -ef | grep svscan demonstrates that svscan is running, qmailctl can't seem to find scripts in the /command folder.

(Per your suggestion, I'm trying to do this install on Slackware  (version 13.37).)

I also tried running ./rts > rts.out (as mentioned in Dave Sill's book, "Life With Qmail") but it bombs on every line--again complaining 'command not found' one line after the next.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for your response.

-Dave Martin

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Hi Dave, first of all thanks

Hi Dave, first of all thanks a lot for your support.

You should have this PATH inside the /command/svscanboot script:

PATH=/command:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin

qmail should start by means of a line inside /etc/inittab

SV:123456:respawn:/command/svscanboot

so, you may want to check that svscanboot was actually launched on boot, or try to run it manually. I prefer to have it in my rc.local

fyi, I have tested everything on a slackware64 13.37

cheers :)

Roberto

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Daemantools with systemd

if your linux using systemd

remove SV:123456:repawn:/command/svscanboot from /etc/inittab

create a file at /lib/systemd/system/daemontools.service
edit as

[Unit]
Description=DJB daemontools
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/command/svscanboot
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

copy links

ln -s /lib/systemd/system/daemontools.service /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants

reboot ur system

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I confirmed the settings you gave, but still not working

qmailctl start continues to return errors on line 17: svok: command not found 

However, ps -ef | grep svscan returns the following:

root 1886 1 0 Mar10 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /command/svscanboot
root 1948 1886 0 Mar10 ? 00:00:02 svscan /service
root 9379 6093 0 01:12 pts/0 00:00:00 grep svscan

Could there be a permissions issue with the qmail user accounts?  Does the qmail group need to be granted permission to in order to run the daemontool utilities?

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It's seems like the

It's seems like the daemontools' installation has failed... can you post please:

ls -l /command/
ps axfuww

anyway feel free to contact me in private using the contact button above

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