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

Posted by Wes in Sysadmin

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

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

June 29, 2010 at 5:23 am
David Merrick says:

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.
December 15, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Arnau says:

Thank you so much too! :)
September 13, 2011 at 2:11 pm
AstroMan says:

Thanks, this helped.
November 16, 2011 at 3:49 pm
praneeth hettiarachchi says:

Thanks so much! saved my day!!
November 21, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Martin says:

Thanks a lot for this hint. Put it into my own IT blog with link to this page so I will not forget again……
November 21, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Ubuntu postfix error — postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory | The Fox from Switzerland says:

[...] thanks to the databasically.com [...]
December 1, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Jason says:

GOLDEN!!

Thanks
December 10, 2011 at 3:23 am
Pedrog says:

Excelent!! it works super!! Thank you very much
December 11, 2011 at 2:24 pm
Dafydd says:

Thanks, this worked great!