[cobalt-users] Sendmail Problems?

["Andrew M. Danneffel" <adanneffel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Over the past week some clients on my RaQ4 have been experiencing intermittent sendmail problems.
Sometimes when they try and send via an email client program they're told that the smtp server could
not be contacted over a 60 second period.  When I restart the server this problem goes away.  I'm
not quite sure what would be causing it, but I have noticed that there seems to be a lot of
instances of sendmail running on my system. Many of them seem to be "hanging around" for a while.

I keyed in ps -aux and got the following results for sendmail (some of the lines are cut off, but
you get the idea):

sendmail: accepting connections
sendmail: server f5.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.5] child wait
sendmail: g1Q1kvF06081 f5.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.5]: MAI
sendmail: server f39.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.39] child wa
sendmail: g1Q1lBF06106 f39.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.39]: M
sendmail: server f123.law10.hotmail.com [64.4.15.123] child wa
sendmail: g1Q1miF06205 f123.law10.hotmail.com [64.4.15.123]: M
sendmail: server law2-f62.hotmail.com [216.32.181.62] child wa
sendmail: g1Q1nMF06235 law2-f62.hotmail.com [216.32.181.62]: M
sendmail: q2/g1O8dIt18857 www1.phenet.com.: user open
sendmail: q3/g1OGi9s20438 a.mx.hi-speedoffers.net.: user open
sendmail: q4/g1OLdJt08922 www1.phenet.com.: user open
sendmail: server f130.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.130] child
sendmail: g1Q1qaF06428 f130.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.130]:
sendmail: server f227.pav1.hotmail.com [64.4.31.227] child wai
sendmail: g1Q1s6F06520 f227.pav1.hotmail.com [64.4.31.227]: MA
sendmail: server f6.law7.hotmail.com [216.33.237.6] child wait
sendmail: g1Q1sDF06542 f6.law7.hotmail.com [216.33.237.6]: MAI
sendmail: server oe65.law10.hotmail.com [64.4.14.200] child wa
sendmail: g1Q1tdF06643 oe65.law10.hotmail.com [64.4.14.200]: M
sendmail: server f39.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.39] child wa

There also appears to be some errors associated with these threads in /var/log/maillog.  This is an
example of one of them

Feb 25 17:54:30 www sendmail[4636]: g1Q1SCF04636: lost input channel from f6.law7.hotmail.com
[216.33.237.6] to MTA after mail
Feb 25 17:54:30 www sendmail[4636]: g1Q1SCF04636: from=<user_email>, size=1781, class=0, nrcpts=0,
proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=f6.law7.hotmail.com [216.33.237.6]

Is this a normal occurance? I don't recall seeing such entries a few weeks ago.  Note that they're
not always associated with Hotmail addresses and that I'm using the pop before smtp protocol.

Any comments on this would be appreciated! :)

Thanks

Andrew