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

24 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!
January 9, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Lewis Bassett says:

Thanks! No matter how many times one installs Postfix, one always forgets this step!
January 14, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Wilson says:

Just like that :) thanks
January 24, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Axel says:

Had teh same problem on a Suse Box. This was a fast solution, thanks!
February 18, 2012 at 12:22 am
Dan MacNeil says:

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.
April 7, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Phil says:

thank you
May 17, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Starlight says:

Thank you! This was exactly what had happened to me also when installing Postfix :)
June 5, 2012 at 7:04 am
Christopher says:

Thank you so much! I was struggling around already how many hours now.. until I found this great post.
July 11, 2012 at 2:18 pm
stachu says:

Thanks man ;)
July 12, 2012 at 5:48 pm
foobar says:

thanks man!
September 17, 2012 at 3:40 am
Afrojoe says:

Fixed my issue tooo… youre just awesome!
October 4, 2012 at 10:38 pm
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December 7, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Astro says:

Worked a charm. I have installed Postfix 100 times at least and actually hadn’t come across this issue. THANKS!
December 14, 2012 at 11:05 am
Carlton says:

Thanks, resolved my problems and mails are now sending
December 20, 2012 at 6:19 am
jenda says:

Díky moc. Tvůj postup jak zprovoznit posílání emailů je fakt pěkně napsaný. :-)
March 25, 2013 at 7:41 pm
BugUglyMike says:

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