Uninitialized use of As= in the MTA log (Doc ID 2441079.1)

Last updated on FEBRUARY 08, 2022

Applies to:

Goal

We see log entries where the "as=" value does not match "us=" e.g.

• The us= value seems right.  If we look at only the enqueues from tcp_auth, then as= is consistently right.
• It is the enqueues from the other intermediate channels which seem to be using random values for the as=.
  • It looks like as= is not always set on the process_* channels, which is expected.  But when it is not set, it also is not cleared from the previous use (if it did get set).
• This is happening all the time, not just related to the admin account.

See the following for more information on the meaning of these fields:

Log_format MTA option
 ac - entry type or action (always present; also appears in en entries)
 us - username (present if bit 0/value 1 of log_username is set and a username is available)
 as - (new in 8.0) Authenticated user's primary mail address, i.e., normally the value of the user's mail attribute (present if bit 2/value 4 of log_username is set and a primary address is available)

Store Transaction Log Format
us - User name: the canonial authorization user identity (the permanent identity of the primary mail account being accessed). For more information on user identifiers see User Identifiers. Can also be [unauthenticated] when appropriate. For the ac action, the string "Admin" is used when this can't be determined (typically for mboxutil).

Actionattributes Option
The actionattributes option (available for imap, pop, and messagetrace) specifies the action attributes enabled in Message Store transaction logging. This can take the value of "all" to enable logging of all actions, or "+(e1 e2 e3)" to enable only event codes listed, or "-(e1 e2 e3)" to enable all events except those listed. See the Store Transaction Log Format section for permitted event codes.

Eg. The config value of imap.actionattributes should be set to "mi" instead of "+mi" for message id event code.

Actions Option
For 8.0.1 this is "all" by default and for 8.0.2 this is "-(mi)" (log all attributes except the message id attribute) by default. Note that the message id is expensive to extract from message headers and requires per-message logging of expunge events.
The default value is: -(mi)

Store Transaction Log Format
ac - Action code. First letter is 'O' for connection open and 'C' for connection close. Subsequent letters are extensible flags. See MTA transaction log entry format for the meaning of the subsequent flags for the MTA.
E - Enqueue.

Solution

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