[cobalt-users] Smpt claims to be Down but isn't

[John MacDonald <jmacdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

It seems that whenever I restart sendmail with the new .cf
for blacklist lookup, the server claims to shutdown then restart
SMTP at 15 minute intervals (the time is actually not consistent -
sometimes it will be Ok for a couple of hours, other times its regular 
at the 15 min. intervals).  The strange thing is that I can still send 
emails during the supposed shutdown and a PS shows sendmail
accepting connections.  The error message claims high CPU load
but top shows 9x% idle and low load averages.
This is the error message that I receive:

The SMTP server is not running and could not be restarted. 
The SMTP server may shut itself down temporarily under extreme 
load. Check the CPU load on the server. If the load does not appear 
to be the problem, go to the Server Desktop and try turning the SMTP 
server off then on again to see if this corrects the problem. If the 
SMTP server is still unable to start, try rebooting the server itself 
by clicking the Reboot Now button in the Power menu under 
System Settings. If the SMTP server is still unable to start, 
please refer http://www.sun.com/service/online/ 
or technical support. 

Tailing the maillog shows that the lookup is working - lots of 
rejections.  Anybody have any thoughts, ideas, or similar 
experiences? (I did see another post recently about the 
same error message but this person had been hacked and
had services running that were using lots of CPU time.)

Thanks in advance,
John MacDonald