Postfix unable to find /etc/postfix/virtual file
On an Ubuntu Server 12.04 machine, I've set up an email forwarder for a specific address in /etc/postfix/virtual:
[email protected] [email protected]
The address [email protected] works and receives mail. When I send mail to [email protected] I get this in the logs:
warning: hash:/etc/postfix/virtual is unavailable. open database /etc/postfix/virtual.db: No such file or directory
warning: hash:/etc/postfix/virtual lookup error for "[email protected]"
warning: 705B58190E: virtual_alias_maps map lookup problem for [email protected] -- deferring delivery
Why might postfix be unable to find the /etc/postfix/virtual file?
$ ls -la
total 96
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul 4 08:46 .
drwxr-xr-x 102 root root 4096 Jun 24 06:23 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 274 Jun 24 06:23 dynamicmaps.cf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1549 Jul 4 08:46 main.cf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5531 Jun 24 06:23 master.cf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 19707 Feb 20 20:03 postfix-files
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8729 Feb 20 20:03 postfix-script
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 26498 Feb 20 20:03 post-install
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 20 20:03 sasl
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43 Jul 4 08:27 virtual
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 130 Jul 4 08:26 vmailbox
$ cat virtual
[email protected] [email protected]
$ cat main.cf | grep virtual
virtual_mailbox_domains = mydomain.com
virtual_mailbox_base = /var/mail/vhosts
virtual_mailbox_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/vmailbox
virtual_minimum_uid = 100
virtual_uid_maps = static:5000
virtual_gid_maps = static:5000
virtual_alias_domains = fastupfront.com
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
# virtual_alias_maps = /etc/postfix/virtual # I tried without the 'hash:' prefix as well.
Note that mydomain.com is anonymized. In fact, the domain name that is used in the files is a real domain name that does have its A and MX records pointed to the IP address of this server, and serving webpages with Apache works. The DNS records were changed last week, so I know that they have propagated.
Answer
The problem was that the following commands need to be executed after editing /etc/postfix/virtual:
$ sudo postmap /etc/postfix/virtual
$ sudo service postfix reload