Sendmail blocks systemd startup to finish

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Migration from openSUSE Leap from 15.6 to 16.0 is nearly complete.

There’s one issue left:

Calling systemd-analyze gives this result:

Please try again later.
Hint: Use 'systemctl list-jobs' to see active jobs

This is output of systemctl list-jobs:

JOB  UNIT                       TYPE  STATE  
336  mail-transfer-agent.target start waiting
172  graphical.target           start waiting
173  multi-user.target          start waiting
5265 sendmail-client.service    start running
4 jobs listed.

Due to sendmail startup timeout it gets restarted repeatedly, job id increases accordingly.

From a user point of view email sending and receiving does work, maybe a little bit delayed.

Service sendmail-client.service does not start, due to

● sendmail-client.service - Sendmail Mail Transport Client
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sendmail-client.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: activating (start) since Sun 2026-08-02 18:39:30 CEST; 8s ago
        Job: 5728
 Invocation: 4ec7aa2e27a240b2a1f6a1bbed12dc79
TriggeredBy: ● sendmail-client.path
    Process: 4370 ExecStartPre=/etc/mail/system/sm-client.pre (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 4376 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/sendmail $SENDMAIL_CLIENT_ARGS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 19019)
        CPU: 139ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/sendmail-client.service
             ├─4379 "sendmail: Queue control"
             └─4380 "sendmail: running queue: /var/spool/clientmqueue"

Aug 02 18:39:30 Schnecke2G.Jacobs.home systemd[1]: Starting Sendmail Mail Transport Client...
Aug 02 18:39:30 Schnecke2G.Jacobs.home sendmail-client[4379]: starting daemon (8.18.2): persistent-queueing@00:01:00
Aug 02 18:39:30 Schnecke2G.Jacobs.home systemd[1]: sendmail-client.service: Can't open PID file '/var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.pid' (yet?) after start: Permission denied

file “/var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.pid” gets created as requested with access 0600 and ownership mail.mail:

sudo ls -l /var/spool/clientmqueue/
[sudo] Passwort für ...
insgesamt ...
-rw-------. 1 mail mail   53  2. Aug 18:53 sm-client.pid
-rw-rw----. 1 root mail 1448  2. Aug 18:22 sm-client.st

rpm --query sendmail
sendmail-8.18.2-lp160.411.1.x86_64

What to check? sendmail.cf is created from"my" mc file.

Something must have changed between openSUSE Leap 15 and version 16, as systemd succeeded to complete system startup completely before OS upgrade.

2

Just to avoid misunderstanding: This is what I’ve done as a one-liner

LANG=C uptime ; echo "#####"; sudo systemd-analyze ; echo "#####"; systemctl list-jobs ; echo "#####"; systemctl status sendmail-client.service
 21:02:18  up   9:01,  1 user,  load average: 0.48, 0.45, 0.36
#####
Bootup is not yet finished (org.freedesktop.systemd1.Manager.FinishTimestampMonotonic=0).
Please try again later.
Hint: Use 'systemctl list-jobs' to see active jobs
#####
JOB   UNIT                       TYPE  STATE  
172   graphical.target           start waiting
381   mail-transfer-agent.target start waiting
39805 sendmail-client.service    start running
173   multi-user.target          start waiting

4 jobs listed.
#####
● sendmail-client.service - Sendmail Mail Transport Client
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sendmail-client.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: activating (start) since Mon 2026-08-03 21:01:06 CEST; 1min 12s ago
        Job: 39805
 Invocation: df81a1218cb1479799050cd89c5cce1f
TriggeredBy: ● sendmail-client.path
    Process: 15182 ExecStartPre=/etc/mail/system/sm-client.pre (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 15188 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/sendmail $SENDMAIL_CLIENT_ARGS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 19019)
        CPU: 158ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/sendmail-client.service
             ├─15190 "sendmail: Queue control"
             └─15191 "sendmail: running queue: /var/spool/clientmqueue"

Aug 03 21:01:06 Schnecke2G.Jacobs.home systemd[1]: Starting Sendmail Mail Transport Client...
Aug 03 21:01:06 Schnecke2G.Jacobs.home sendmail-client[15190]: starting daemon (8.18.2): persistent-queueing@00:01:00
Aug 03 21:01:06 Schnecke2G.Jacobs.home systemd[1]: sendmail-client.service: Can't open PID file '/var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.pid' (yet?) after start: Permission denied
3

If your running SELinux, then that could be the issue, check the forum side panel and follow the link to the SELinux portal and the troubleshoot part and check that output.

4

Good hint, thank you. I wasn’t aware of this possibility:

sestatus
SELinux status:                 enabled
SELinuxfs mount:                /sys/fs/selinux
SELinux root directory:         /etc/selinux
Loaded policy name:             targeted
Current mode:                   enforcing
Mode from config file:          enforcing
Policy MLS status:              enabled
Policy deny_unknown status:     allowed
Memory protection checking:     actual (secure)
Max kernel policy version:      33
5

I upgraded a Leap 15.6 system (in a VM) to Leap 16.0. And then I switched from apparmor to SELINUX. And the one problem that I found was with “sendmail”.

I took the easy way out, and switched to “procmail”.

On my main desktop system, I stayed with apparmor to avoid the issue.

6

So have a read here and it will probably need a bug report if you stay with sendmail…
https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:SELinux/Troubleshooting

7

Thank you for this hint.
I’ll investigate further and will create a bug report if necessary.

8

I’ve posted this bug report

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1273901

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