Re: courier-mta-ssl failing

Sam Varshavchik <[email protected]> Wed, 28 May 2025 19:04:08 -0400
Newsgroups	gmane.mail.imap.courier.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Mike Wright writes:

> Greetings,
>
> This AM I couldn't send mail.  On my end a new fiber drop with new IPs
> was suspected. The courier setup is hosted on a remote server for
> years now.  But when I restarted courier I got this error:
>
> systemd[1]: Starting courier-mta-ssl.service - Courier ESMTP Daemon...
> esmtpd-ssl[986]: /usr/sbin/esmtpd-ssl: 257: /etc/courier/esmtpd-ssl:
> Syntax error: newline unexpected
> systemd[1]: courier-mta-ssl.service: Control process exited,
> code=exited, status=2/INVALIDARGUMENT
> systemd[1]: courier-mta-ssl.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
> systemd[1]: Failed to start courier-mta-ssl.service - Courier ESMTP Daemon.
>
> Looking at /usr/sbin/esmptd-ssl shows line 257 is the last line and
> ends with a double quote and no newline.
>
> /etc/courier/esmtpd-ssl was last touched on Dec. 1.
>
> Any ideas?

/etc/courier/esmtpd-ssl is described as a configuration file, but it is  
really a shell script. The configuration file syntax is shell syntax  
compatible, and can be an arbitrary shell script that sets specific shell  
variables, and configuration settings become environment variables. Running  
a Google search on the error message will reveal it as a common shell error  
message.

Now, what happened to it, despite the fact that its timestamp shows it's  
been unaltered for a while, that's a separate Scooby-Doo mystery. The first  
one is to figure out exactly what's wrong with it.

Running

. /etc/courier/smtpd-ssl

should result in the same error message. Shell scripts, in this respect, are  
very similar to C++: a typo often gets reported as an error many lines after  
the actual typo, when the typo involves an important punctuation character.  
The parser keeps going for a while before it gives up. You need to figure  
out what the current error is, first, and go from there.

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