Qmail-inject: fatal: mail server permanently rejected message

You see the “qmail-inject: fatal: mail server permanently rejected message” error message while sending emails from a Plesk server and the error message such as follows in the mail logs:


qmail-queue-handlers[xxxx]: Unable to change group ID: Operation not permitted
qmail-queue[xxxx]: files: write buf 0xbff4dfe0[156] to fd (5) error – (32) Broken pipe
qmail-queue[xxxx]: files: cannot write chuck from 4 to 5 – (32) Broken pipe


It is due to the incorrect permission/ownership of the ‘qmail-queue’ file under the “/var/qmail/bin” directory. Make sure
the ownership is ”mhandlers-user:popuser’
the permission is 2511.
Check the current ownership/permission:

# ls -la /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue

It should be as follows:
-r-x–s–x  1 mhandlers-user popuser 67804 May  4 08:41 /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue
If not, correct the ownership

# chown mhandlers-user.popuser /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue

set the proper permissions,

# chmod 2511 /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue

Restart Qmail once and see if the email works.
Note: If the emails still doesn’t work, please comment this post with the error message and the output of the following command and I will find out the solution for you:

ls -la /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue*