Ubuntu postfix error — postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory

Posted Posted by Wes in Sysadmin     Comments 24 comments
Dec
2

I installed postfix and got this error:
postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory.

Turns out that sendmail was previously installed and that was messing things up. I had to stop sendmail and make the appropriate directory and restart postfix.

Specifically:

mkfifo /var/spool/postfix/public/pickup
ps aux | grep mail
kill
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

24 Comments to “Ubuntu postfix error — postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory”

  • Thanks so much! I unknowingly had sendmail and postfix running together and it’s been a frustrating couple hours trying to figure out why mail wasn’t sending!

    For those with the same problem who come across this, be sure and do “kill [process number]” when running the commands above.

  • Thank you so much too! :)

  • Thanks, this helped.

  • Thanks so much! saved my day!!

  • Thanks a lot for this hint. Put it into my own IT blog with link to this page so I will not forget again……

  • GOLDEN!!

    Thanks

  • Excelent!! it works super!! Thank you very much

  • Thanks, this worked great!

  • Thanks! No matter how many times one installs Postfix, one always forgets this step!

  • Just like that :) thanks

  • Had teh same problem on a Suse Box. This was a fast solution, thanks!

  • Thank you this helped.

    Though in my case it was only nessarily to be sure sendmail was stopped. Apparently uninstalling it doesn’t stop it.

  • thank you

  • Thank you! This was exactly what had happened to me also when installing Postfix :)

  • Thank you so much! I was struggling around already how many hours now.. until I found this great post.

  • Thanks man ;)

  • thanks man!

  • Fixed my issue tooo… youre just awesome!

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  • Worked a charm. I have installed Postfix 100 times at least and actually hadn’t come across this issue. THANKS!

  • Thanks, resolved my problems and mails are now sending

  • Díky moc. Tvůj postup jak zprovoznit posílání emailů je fakt pěkně napsaný. :-)

  • This helped.
    apt-get purge sendmail did not purge everything.
    Had to manually remove the rc?.d ‘S’ and ‘K’ scripts from /etc under Debian

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