This question comes from a problem much similar to this https://serverfault.com/questions/320607/ubuntu-jaunty-sendmail-php-mail-premission-errors
But those answers don't solve my problem
I have a php application which is using PHPMailer to send emails.
I installed sendmail on my ubuntu 12.04 LTS with
sudo apt-get install sendmail
sudo sendmailconfig
But the application failed to send any mail. In the mail.err it says:
Apr 14 00:31:42 AY sendmail[32241]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(www-data): can not chdir(/var/spool/mqueue-client/): Permission denied
while www-data is the username of apache2.
Then I followed some guides from internet, add www-data to smmsp group:
sudo usermod -a -G smmsp www-data
Now when I
groups www-data
I get
www-data : www-data smmsp
and the line in the /etc/group is:
smmsp:x:114:www-data
Also I made sure of access to /var/spool/mqueue-client/ is 770
/var/spool]$ ls -la
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Apr 2 00:21 .
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Apr 14 03:30 ..
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug 6 2012 cron
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Aug 6 2012 mail -> ../mail
drwxr-s--- 2 smmta smmsp 4096 Apr 14 06:25 mqueue
drwxrws--- 2 smmsp smmsp 4096 Apr 14 06:25 mqueue-client
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 13 2012 plymouth
drwxr-xr-x 2 syslog adm 4096 Mar 31 2012 rsyslog
/]$ ls -ld /var/spool/mqueue-client/ /usr/sbin/sendmail
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Apr 2 00:21 /usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/sendmail
drwxrws--- 2 smmsp smmsp 4096 Apr 14 06:25 /var/spool/mqueue-client/
But I still get error when I try to send mail
Apr 14 03:26:57 AY sendmail[6131]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(www-data): can not write to queue directory /var/spool/mqueue-client/ (RunAsGid=33, required=114): Permission denied
while 33 is gid of www-data
www-data:x:33:
What should I do to get sendmail work but keep the security? Further, What is the proper permission configuration (user, group, and directories access etc) of sendmail in a production environment ?
Standard installation of sendmail-8.12+ requires to install sendmail binary as set group id.
(/usr/sbin/sendmail -> ... -> /usr/lib/sm.bin/sendmail in you case)
-rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp ...
In case of your softlinks chain try:
chown root:smmsp /usr/lib/sm.bin/sendmail
chmod 2555 /usr/lib/sm.bin/sendmail
Recommended permissions are described in SECURITY file in sendmail distribution. On my debian the file is installed as /usr/share/doc/sendmail-doc/sendmail/SECURITY.gz by sendmail-doc package.