Daily maintenance task hangs on check-quota or dk_sign if Qmail is used as mail server

Symptoms

• Qmail is used as SMTP server.

• Daily maintenance task hangs due to the following hung processes:

  CONFIG_TEXT: root 14993 1 0 Aug24 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/sbin/sendmail -i – john.doe@example.com
  root 14999 14993 0 Aug24 ? 00:00:00 _ /usr/sbin/sendmail.act -i – john.doe@example.com
  popuser 15003 14999 0 Aug24 ? 00:00:00 _ /usr/sbin/sendmail.act -i – john.doe@example.com
  popuser 15004 15003 0 Aug24 ? 00:00:00 _ /usr/local/psa/handlers/hooks/check-quota none root@plesk.example.com john.doe@example.com

  OR

  CONFIG_TEXT: root 13975 0.0 0.0 28852 3180 ? Sep10 0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/sbin/sendmail -i – john.doe@example.com
  root 13981 0.0 0.0 23868 1508 ? Sep10 0:00 _ /usr/sbin/sendmail.act -i – john.doe@example.com
  popuser 13994 0.0 0.0 23868 1476 ? Sep10 0:00 _ /usr/sbin/sendmail.act -i – john.doe@example.com
  popuser 13998 0.0 0.0 45900 2228 ? Sep10 0:00 _ /usr/local/psa/handlers/hooks/dk_sign signer root@plesk.example.com john.doe@example.com

  If kill all check-quota or dk_sign processes, execution of daily maintenance task continues.

• Also, the zombie process logrotate can be found as one of the child processes of the Plesk daily maintenance task:

  # ps auxwwf
  ..........
  root 4390 0.0 0.0 116880 712 ? Ss Mar16 0:07 crond
  root 31308 0.0 0.0 173424 2188 ? S Mar18 0:00 \_ CROND
  root 31309 0.0 0.0 106112 1052 ? Ss Mar18 0:00 | \_ /bin/bash -c [ ! -f /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron ] && run-parts /etc/cron.daily
  root 31311 0.0 0.0 106112 1108 ? S Mar18 0:00 | \_ /bin/bash /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.daily
  root 31359 0.0 0.0 106116 1048 ? S Mar18 0:00 | \_ /bin/sh /etc/cron.daily/50plesk-daily
  ..........
  root 1634 0.0 0.0 76108 6232 ? S Mar18 0:04 | \_ /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/statistics_collector
  root 6066 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Z Mar18 0:03 | \_ [logrotate] <defunct>

• Scheduled task created using the steps below hangs with no notifications:

  1. Log into Plesk as admin user.

  2. Open the menu Profile & Preferences (My Profile in Power User view) and set email address (local mail account).

  3. Create a task to run the command /usr/local/psa/bin/sw-engine-pleskrun /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/DailyMaintainance/script.php -f ExecuteStatistics and set the option Notify to Every time.

Cause

This is the Plesk bug PPP-31661, which was fixed in Plesk Onyx 17.8.11 Update 1.

Resolution

Upgrade Plesk to Onyx 17.8.11.