Postfix master dead but pid file exists

Posted by Theresa Arzadon-Labajo (tarzadon) on Mar 06 2014Tech Stuff >> Unix-Lin

ux
Puppet logs showed:
puppet-agent[16302]: (/Stage[main]/Mail::Postfix/Service[postfix]/ensure) change
from stopped to running failed: Could not start Service[postfix]: Execution of
'/sbin/service postfix start' returned 1: at /etc/puppet/modules/mail/manifests
/postfix.pp:8
Status showed:
# service postfix status
master dead but pid file exists
Stop and start:
# service postfix stop
# service postfix status
master dead but pid file exists
Remove pid and lock files:
# \rm /var/spool/postfix/pid/master.pid
# \rm /var/lock/subsys/postfix
# service postfix stop
# service postfix start
Starting postfix:
# service postfix status
master dead but pid file exists

[ OK ]

I checked the status of the postfix process on my other workstations and servers
and they were all dead.
yum.log showed that postfix was recently updated:
Feb 22 04:47:23 Updated: 2:postfix-2.6.6-6.el6_5.x86_64
Another log showed:
postfix/master[1490]: fatal: open lock file /var/lib/postfix/master.lock: unable
to set exclusive lock: Resource temporarily unavailable
# ls -l /var/lib/postfix/master.lock
-rw------- 1 postfix postfix 17 Feb 7 11:08 /var/lib/postfix/master.lock
# fuser /var/lib/postfix/master.lock
/var/lib/postfix/master.lock: 15590
# ps -ef | grep 15590
root
15590 0.0 0.0 6624 1868 ?
Ss Feb07 0:33
/usr/libexec/p
ostfix/master
Kill the process that is accessing the master.lock file:
# fuser -k /var/lib/postfix/master.lock
Stop postfix, remove pid and lock file, kill the process accessing master.lock,
restart postfix:
Starting postfix: [ OK ]
master (pid 18179) is running...
Ran a script on the rest of my workstations and servers:
sudo service postfix stop; sudo \rm /var/lock/subsys/postfix; sudo \rm /var/spo
ol/postfix/pid/master.pid; sudo fuser -k /var/lib/postfix/master.lock;sleep 5;su
do service postfix start;sleep 5; sudo service postifix status
Last changed: Mar 06 2014 at 2:53 PM
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