MBF Knowledge Base

Inbound email is being received by Postfix and the POP3 login also looks fine, however, the mail directory for Postfix is empty. I cannot find any raw email files. What can I do?

There are many reasons why this may be happening. Try the steps below to retrieve more information about the issue.

Postfix logs all failed and successful deliveries to a logfile. The file is usually called /var/log/maillog or /var/log/mail; the exact pathname is defined in the /etc/syslog.conf file.

When Postfix does not receive or deliver mail, the first order of business is to look for errors that prevent Postfix from working properly. You can do this by running the following command:

% egrep '(warning|error|fatal|panic):' /some/log/file | more

Note: the most important message is near the BEGINNING of the output. Error messages that come later are less useful.

The nature of each problem is indicated as follows:

"panic" indicates a problem in the software itself that only a programmer can fix. Postfix cannot proceed until this is fixed.

"fatal" is the result of missing files, incorrect permissions, incorrect configuration file settings that you can fix. Postfix cannot proceed until this is fixed.

"error" reports an error condition. For safety reasons, a Postfix process will terminate when more than 13 of these happen.

"warning" indicates a non-fatal error. These are problems that you may not be able to fix (such as a broken DNS server elsewhere on the network) but may also indicate local configuration errors that could become a problem later.