[cobalt-users] Help .. our RaQ can't Fork !

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of my clients runs an email program called Subscribe Me.  We've had
a lot of problems with Subscribe Me losing addresses in it's mailing
list data base (we've got tens of thousands of addresses).

Here's a piece of an email we got from the Subscribe Me vendor:

> > I hit send list and got a screen saying it was a success... but
> > it was also
> > clear that IE was still trying to do something... so I just left it alone
> > (minimized).  A few minutes later I got an error message  "cannot open the
> > internet site http://www.shadow-man.com/sm.s.cgi  Operation timed out"
> 
> Ahhh.. this would explain a lot.
> 
> This means that your server is not properly executing the "Fork" command in
> the program.
> 
> The Fork command is a command that tells the server to create a secondary
> process and run the secondary command in that secondary process.  We use the
> Fork command to do this because the server would otherwise try to wait until
> the entire first process (mailing to your entir list) was complete before it
> brought back the response of (Success, Mailing Sent).

I wrote back that it didn't make sense to me; if the RaQ couldn't fork,
then it couldn't handle outgoing email, incoming email, or web-serving.

Am I right?  Or is it possible our RaQ isn't forking properly?

> Therefore, we pioneered the use of the Fork process, which is now widely
> used by many of our would-be competitors for the same purpose, to send out
> the mailings in a secondary process so the server would not have to wait for
> the mailings to complete in order to give a "Success, Mailing Sent" message.

Note that he take full credit for pioneering the use of the fork
process.  Gee, wouldn't the apache crew take offense?  How about Eric?

And, gee, shouldn't the server wait for the mailings to complete before
it gives out that success message <smile>?

> It appears, however, that your server is not properly allowing this to
> happen.  Its the first time I've heard of this happening.  Its most likely a
> server configuration problem, as I've never heard of any other RAQ servers
> having the same problem.

Since the RaQ in question is sending out email just fine, is receiving
email just fine, and is serving web pages just fine, I just flat out
don't believe this paragraph.  What about you?

Is it possible our RaQ isn't forking properly?  Is there anywhere a
configuration statement for whether or not forking is allowed?

Is this guy obfuscating?  Or just not giving me enough information (I'm
aware that forking is allowed/disallowed on a program by program basis,
but for his program, written in perl, I'd think he'd be controlling it)?

Any comments?

Thanks.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
nobaloney.net
P. O. Box 52672
Riverside, CA  92517
voice: (909) 787-8589  *  fax: (909) 782-0205