Table of Contents

Annoying SASL Error

Background

For the longest time, my damn auth.log file kept getting spammed with the following errors:

Dec  3 12:18:58 postfix postfix/smtpd[53444]: sql_select option missing
Dec  3 12:18:58 postfix postfix/smtpd[53444]: auxpropfunc error no mechanism available
Dec  3 12:24:32 postfix postfix/smtpd[53490]: sql_select option missing
Dec  3 12:24:32 postfix postfix/smtpd[53490]: auxpropfunc error no mechanism available
Dec  3 12:28:06 postfix postfix/smtpd[53506]: sql_select option missing
Dec  3 12:28:06 postfix postfix/smtpd[53506]: auxpropfunc error no mechanism available
Dec  3 12:30:17 postfix postfix/smtpd[53529]: sql_select option missing
Dec  3 12:30:17 postfix postfix/smtpd[53529]: auxpropfunc error no mechanism available
Dec  3 12:33:12 postfix postfix/smtpd[53544]: sql_select option missing
Dec  3 12:33:12 postfix postfix/smtpd[53544]: auxpropfunc error no mechanism available

Needless to say, quite annoying. I am using authdaemond as my pwcheck_method in my smtpd.conf so it was rather odd to me that the sasl library was complaining about a missing sql_select option since it shouldn't have been loading the sql plugin at all. I searched the tubes quite a few times with no real results until I finally found the following fix.

The Workaround

The workaround for the above problem is actually quite simple, really. You simply remove all the libsql* files in /usr/local/lib/sasl2. That's it. Personally, I moved them all into a folder I created in that directory on the off chance that I may need them in the future. Obviously, this is going to wreak havoc if you are using libsasl for more than one app's authentication and the other one uses sql. But, if you are using it as I am, where I'm only using sasl for smtp auth through an alternate mechanism (authdaemond in my case), then this will end the spamming of your log file.