Postfix – connect from unknown[ip.address]

One server I poke around on, has a number of postfix instances

(see: postmulti).

Interestingly, one instance was logging things like :

Oct 26 22:02:05 mail postfix-blah/smtpd[59158]: connect from unknown[1.2.3.4]
Oct 26 22:02:05 mail postfix-blah/smtpd[59158]: CA9292EE2C0: client=unknown[1.2.3.4]

Which makes you think perhaps Postfix isn’t able to do DNS lookups – even though it’s configured to do so.

After a bit of investigation —

1. DNS resolution on the host itself works fine.
2. Postfix is running smtpd in a chroot (see /etc/postfix-blah/master.cf)
3. The ‘default’ Postfix instance (/etc/postfix, /var/spool/postfix) doesn’t have this problem.
4. /var/spool/postfix-blah/lib doesn’t exist, but /var/spool/postfix/lib does and contains libnss_* files
5. So, cp -a /var/spool/postfix/lib /var/spool/postfix-blah/lib fixes it.
6. Turning off ‘chroot’ for the smtp daemon fixes it (edit: /etc/postfix-blah/master.cf).

The  server is Ubuntu Lucid, so perhaps it’s a bit long in the tooth now – and maybe this problem won’t crop up for anyone else…