Really, really dumb question - startup sequence for sendmail/spamassassin/spamass-milter

[Terry Kennedy]

  I have a really dumb question. What is the recommended start sequence for
sendmail (8.12.7, both the sendmail-mta and sendmail-queue daemons), spam-
assassin (2.44, with spamd), and spamass-milter (0.1.3a) on a BSD/OS (should
be similar to the other *BSD's) system?

  I had this working in the past with the following in /etc/rc:

/usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-mta -bd -q30m
/usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-msp-queue -Ac -q30m

  and then in /etc/rc.local doing:

/usr/bin/spamd -d -u spamd
/usr/local/bin/spamass-milter -f -p /var/run/spamass.sock

  This was working until I upgraded all of the software (sendmail from 8.12.6
to 8.12.7, spamassassin from 2.43 to 2.44, and spamass-milter from 1.2 to
1.3a). On a reboot, I got:

Feb  5 03:58:34 gate sm-mta[248]: starting daemon (8.12.7): address@hidden:30:00
Feb  5 03:58:34 gate sm-msp-queue[251]: starting daemon (8.12.7): 
address@hidden:30:00
Feb  5 03:58:46 gate spamass-milter[322]: spamass-milter 0.1.3a starting
Feb  5 03:58:48 gate spamd[320]: server started on port 783 (running version 
2.44)
Feb  5 03:58:52 gate spamass-milter[322]: spamass-milter 0.1.3a exiting
Feb  5 04:00:59 gate sm-mta[522]: h1590mvx000522: Milter (spamassassin): local 
socket name /var/run/spamass.sock unsafe
Feb  5 04:00:59 gate sm-mta[522]: h1590mvx000522: Milter (spamassassin): to 
error state

  and no spamass-milter process was running after this. I killed the sendmails,
started the milter, and re-started the sendmails and everything is Ok.

  But that particular sequence (spamassassin/milter/sendmails) in the rc* files
generated other errors in the past, so I'm reluctant to try it "just to see
what happens" now, since this is a production system.

  I assume the complaint from sendmail is because the socket didn't exist
when sendmail started, but why did spamass-milter exit? I assume that if
the milter didn't exit, sendmail would have eventually noticed the socket
appeared and things would have worked.

        Terry Kennedy             http://www.tmk.com
        address@hidden             New York, NY USA