Re: [cobalt-developers] Replacing sendmail

["Robert G. Fisher" <rfisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Jul 29, 2000 at 07:19:02PM -0700, Jeff Lasman wrote:
> There are plenty of instances sending email; as I've said before in
> various places (and no, I'm not blaming you for not reading all those
> places, only explaining), I really think that's the problem.

This is normal when you use the -bd or background daemon.

One process listens to port 25 for incoming connections.  Once
it binds the socket, it forks into a new process that handles 
the reciept for that connection.  It also forks to try and
processing the queue on regular intervals specified either
with the -q command line option or in the sendmail.cf.

Thus the reason why MaxDaemonChildren will cause sendmail
to refuse connections after so many sendmail processes
are running.
 
> > What entries, if any are being placed in the log file?
> None at all.

If the problem doesn't resurface I guess it's a non issue.
Otherwise it might be useful to use strace to see wehre it's
stopping or if it is calling syslog() since there are plenty
of calls to log information throughout any sendmail process.

> That's why the 500/hour limitation we've installed.  So far I've
> received no complaints since the client set the throttle.

Sounds reasonable enough solution. :-)

> I really don't remember which it's doing, but I do know it's switchable;
> which should I set it for?  Calling sendmail?  I think so, but what's
> your input?  I do want to make sure it's set optimally.

Calling sendmail would be my recommendation.

> Depends how deep I want to go, how deep the customer wants me to go, and
> how little else I have to at the moment.

<toungeincheek>
What ISP SA doesn't have endless hours of time to debug trivial
issues?
</toungeincheek>

Got my induction by having to pinpoint problems with our primary
mail servers -- sendmail discipline truly takes baptismal by fire.

-- 
Robert G. Fisher		     NEOCOM Microspecialists Inc. 
System Administrator/Programmer      (540) 666-9533 x 116