Postfix stops working when /var mounted with noexec I have `/var` on a separate partition, mounted with `noexec,nodev,nosuid`. Sending email through postfix does not work, I have following errors in my log: postfix: fatal: unknown service: smtp/tcp postfix: warning: private/smtp socket: malformed response postfix: warning: process /usr/lib/postfix/smtp pid 6569 exit status 1 postfix: warning: transport smtp failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the problem description postfix: warning: /usr/lib/postfix/smtp: bad command startup -- throttling When I remount `/var` as `exec` and restart postfix, all works fine. I am aware of this bug, but as far as I can tell, my postfix is not running in `chroot`. Why does postfix need `exec` permissions on `/var` then ?

It seems, some components of postfix run in chroot by default (default installation of Debian Wheezy). For instance, following is the `smtp` line from `/etc/postfix/master.cf`


# ==========================================================================
# service type private unpriv chroot wakeup maxproc command + args
# (yes) (yes) (yes) (never) (100)
# ==========================================================================
smtp unix - - - - - smtp


when I changed `-` to `n` the problem disappeared.