Postfix refuses to stop via /etc/init.d/postfix script

[William O'Higgins Witteman]

A few weeks ago, the /etc/init.d/postfix script stopped being able to
stop postfix.  There wasn't any change on my end in terms of
configuration, and I can still start and stop the daemon with "postfix
stop".  This isn't a huge deal, except that there are issues when
upgrading, which look like this:

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? 
Setting up postfix (2.8.3-1) ...

Postfix configuration was untouched.  If you need to make changes, edit
/etc/postfix/main.cf (and others) as needed.  To view Postfix configuration
values, see postconf(1).

After modifying main.cf, be sure to run '/etc/init.d/postfix reload'.

Running newaliases
Stopping Postfix Mail Transport Agent: postfix.
Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent: postfixpostfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is already running
 failed!
invoke-rc.d: initscript postfix, action "restart" failed.
dpkg: error processing postfix (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 postfix
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I don't know shellscript as well as I might, so I am not sure what is
wrong.  I filed a bug with the Debian postfix package maintainers[1],
which has had no response.  Anyone have any ideas?  Thanks.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=627570
-- 

yours,

William

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