[cobalt-users] aliases.db playing up

["Edward Bishop" <eddie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

After making a very minor change to my aliases.db file and doing

makemap hash aliases < aliases

my RaQ4 won't accept any incoming mail. It sends mail OK, but not to local
addresses.

The mail client trying to send the mail just hangs at "sending address..."
and the message doesn't make it into mqueue or get recorded in maillog.
ps-aux shows sendmail trying to deal with it and the message ID but it just
won't move.

Stopping and restarting sendmail makes no difference, and neither does
rebooting the whole server. The only way I have found to get mail moving
again is to delete aliases.db. That works, but obviously my aliases don't
work. As soon as do the makemap to recreate aliases.db, the problem's back.

This would suggest bad syntax in aliases, but I've had it working fine with
the same syntax for weeks. Even if I put it back to its default, original
state by commenting out the three lines I've added at the bottom, as soon as
I do the makemap that's it.

I've tried deleting aliases and recreating it from scratch using pico - no
difference.

I could well be wrong but I've got a hunch this trouble might have started
one day when I accidently did

makemap hash aliases

instead of

makemap hash aliases < aliases

- or it might have been around the time I set up a "vacation response" using
the GUI - but that worked fine for a while, and anyway I've commented it out
of aliases now.

All suggestions gratefully received.

Eddie Bishop