On startup, OpenDKIM verifies if the SigningTable doesn't reference any missing KeyTable entries. However, if the KeyTable is put in an SQL database, and the key is missing for a given domain, this gives the following error on startup, and refuses to startup: opendkim: /etc/opendkim.conf: could not find valid key record "" in KeyTable This error is quite incomprehensible, and certainly doesn't point to the fact that startup fails due to invalid data in the database. Please change the error message to something like this: opendkim: failed to find valid key record "" in KeyTable for domain "example.com" opendkim: refusing to start due to invalid data in database Thanks in advance!