[clamav-users] Permission problem while creating tmp file

[Alex Regan]

Hi,

>> May  1 17:02:06 mail02 clamd[25732]:
>> /var/spool/amavisd/tmp/amavis-20150501T165504-27729-5xw6dnm4/parts/p001: Can't
>> create temporary directory ERROR
>>
>> # ps axwwwu|grep clam
>> amavis   25732  2.8  1.5 823212 523148 ?       Ssl  16:47   0:21 clamd.amavisd
>> -c /etc/clamd.d/amavisd.conf --pid /var/run/clamd.amavisd/clamd.pid
>>
>> If I change to the amavis user, I can create files in the tmp directory:
>>
>> # ls -ld /var/spool/amavisd/tmp
>> drwxr-x---. 9 amavis amavis 12288 May  1 17:03 /var/spool/amavisd/tmp
>>
>> Does anyone have any ideas how to troubleshoot this? Maybe there's some tracing
>> I can enable to troubleshoot this?
>
> If the process had permissions to create files/directories then you
> most likely were running out of free disk space or free inodes.
>
> Is amavis' scratch area located on a ram disk (tmpfs filesystem) with
> limited size?
>
> The error might have been caused by the concurrent handling of several
> large messages or compressed attachments that expand to many and/or
> large files. Do your logs show such events?

It turns out permissions on /var/tmp had changed and lost the sticky 
bit. A more descriptive error message would have been nice.

Consistent error messages from amavis would also be nice. It appears 
sometimes it uses "ERROR" and other times just "!!". A consistent way to 
track them would be nice.

Thanks so much for your help.
Alex