msmtp update 1.8.7-2.el7 breaks mta/sendmail

[dexterbg]

Hi maintainers,

my first post here, so first of all a big thank you for doing a great job!

I've noticed an issue with the latest msmtp update, which has broken sending mails on three of my servers.

TL;DR: if you've got msmtp installed and all sendmail calls suddenly fail with…

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sendmail: account default not found: no configuration file available

…you should check (alternatives --list) and fix your active mta alternative, for example with postfix installed:

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alternatives --set mta /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix

Cause: mta alternative had defaulted to auto = /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix on my systems. It seems, msmtp 1.8.7-2 adds msmtp to the list of mta alternatives with a higher priority than postfix:

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ns31:~# LANG=C alternatives --display mta
mta - status is manual.
 link currently points to /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix
/usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix - priority 30
 slave mta-pam: /etc/pam.d/smtp.postfix
 slave mta-mailq: /usr/bin/mailq.postfix
 slave mta-newaliases: /usr/bin/newaliases.postfix
 slave mta-rmail: /usr/bin/rmail.postfix
 slave mta-sendmail: /usr/lib/sendmail.postfix
 slave mta-mailqman: /usr/share/man/man1/mailq.postfix.1.gz
 slave mta-newaliasesman: /usr/share/man/man1/newaliases.postfix.1.gz
 slave mta-aliasesman: /usr/share/man/man5/aliases.postfix.5.gz
 slave mta-sendmailman: /usr/share/man/man1/sendmail.postfix.1.gz
/usr/bin/msmtp - priority 40
 slave mta-pam: (null)
 slave mta-mailq: /usr/bin/msmtp
 slave mta-newaliases: (null)
 slave mta-rmail: (null)
 slave mta-sendmail: /usr/bin/msmtp
 slave mta-mailqman: /usr/share/man/man1/msmtp.1.gz
 slave mta-newaliasesman: (null)
 slave mta-aliasesman: (null)
 slave mta-sendmailman: /usr/share/man/man1/msmtp.1.gz
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/msmtp.

msmtp is installed for use by certain user accounts only on my systems, it's not meant to be used generally. Unfortunately msmtp also doesn't come with a default configuration and thus doesn't work as a general sendmail replacement, so with msmtp as the mta, all send attempts from other accounts resulted in the error message quoted above.

My suggestions:
a) If msmtp is now meant to replace sendmail.postfix, it should include a usable default configuration.
b) If not, it should not install itself as an mta alternative, or not as one with high priority.

Thanks & regards,
Michael

[TrevorH]

We don't ship msmtp. It's from the third party yum repo, EPEL and you need to report problems with that in the Fedora EPEL section of bugzilla.redhat.com

[carylewis2011]

Thanks very much for your informative post. I performed a yum upgrade yesterday, and it broke outgoing mail, as well as spamassasian.