Postfix & Postdrop - is it a default installed package/service?

I wonder why I do get some errors like:

Okt 21 10:29:01 xx crond[21952]: postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory
Okt 21 10:29:01 xx postfix/postdrop[21952]: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory

in the journal.
Does postfix & postdrop part of the core-system of manjaro and does they’'ve been installed by default?
It’s a workstation, and so I only use E-mail client like thunderbird to receive and send emails.
So I wonder why i got this postfix errors here.

No. Postfix is a mail server package and not part of a default Manjaro installation.

@linux-aarhus I only know postfix from server-environments. Why do I need it for my workstation?

You don’t.

@linux-aarhus
Ah, sorry. I missed this little “not” :slight_smile:
Then I do deactivate it. Thanks for your response.

Hi @rethus,

Let’s find out why postfix was installed. It looks like it is, but let’s first confirm it with:

pamac search postfix

It’ll give an output similar to this:

$ pamac search postfix
postfwd                                                                                                                                                                                                     2.03-1    community
Combines complex postfix restrictions in a ruleset similar to those of the most firewalls
postfixadmin                                                                                                                                                                                                3.3.10-2  community
Web based interface to manage Postfix mailboxes, virtual domains and aliases
postfix-sqlite                                                                                                                                                                                              3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (SQLite integration)
postfix-pgsql                                                                                                                                                                                               3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (PostgreSQL integration)
postfix-pcre                                                                                                                                                                                                3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (PCRE integration)
postfix-mysql                                                                                                                                                                                               3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (MySQL integration)
postfix-lmdb                                                                                                                                                                                                3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (LMDB integration)
postfix-ldap                                                                                                                                                                                                3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (LDAP integration)
postfix-cdb                                                                                                                                                                                                 3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server (CDB integration)
postfix                                                                                                                                                                                                     3.6.2-2   extra
Fast, easy to administer, secure mail server

If it is installed, it’ll show [installed] on the right-hand side. Then, if it is installed, let’s find out whether it was explicitly installed or as a dependency:

pacman -Qi postfix

It should give an output similar to this:

Name            : zsh
Version         : 5.8-1
Description     : A very advanced and programmable command interpreter (shell) for UNIX
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.zsh.org/
Licenses        : custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : pcre  libcap  gdbm
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : manjaro-zsh-config  zsh-autosuggestions  zsh-completions  zsh-history-substring-search  zsh-syntax-highlighting  zsh-theme-powerlevel10k
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 6.22 MiB
Packager        : Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de>
Build Date      : Sun 16 Feb 2020 19:55:21
Install Date    : Fri 11 Sep 2020 18:41:03
Install Reason  : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script  : Yes
Validated By    : Signature

What we’re interested in is the Install Reason. It should be either

  • Explicit or
  • Installed as a dependecy for another package.

If it is “Explicit” it should, theoretically be safe to just uninstall it:

pamac uninstall postfix

Note: This’ll break anything relying on it.

If it is “Installed as a dependecy for another package”, we need to find out what that dependency is, to see if it’s important or not. That is in the Required By of the same output.

Depending on the importance of the packages, you can uninstall them, or ignore the error and continue.

Edit:
Of course, you can just uninstall it and handle the fallout:

pamac remove postfix
1 Like

It was installed as dependency, but required by (Benötigt von) is “nothing”

Then I suspect it’s safe to remove it:

pamac remove postfix

I give it a try. If anything breaks, I can re-install it.

That’s the spirit! :grin:

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.