Re: [cobalt-users] Sendmail appears to break, but still sends mail

["Steve Werby" <steve-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Chris Lathem" <clathem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am using a Raq XTR to host our corporate website, but it appears that
the
> server quits receiving mail. I've restarted sendmail several times, and it
> still seems that the problem occurs.

Before you restarted it, did you check whether it was running and if so what
did you find?  "ps aux | grep sendmail" and /etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail
status.  Also, in situations like this you'll probably want to look at
/var/log/maillog for clues, check server load and memory usage, see what's
in the /home/spool/mqueue subdirectories, check your DNS from the server and
elsewhere and try sending and receiving email both locally and remotely for
multiple user accounts, preferably on different sites and check that
partitions aren't full "df -h".

> The odd thing is that everything is
> stable for a week or so, then it just quits working properly.

It sounds like it resolves itself eventually either by some action on your
part or because something happens, but you don't appear to mention what that
is.  Do you know?

> The only thing
> I have installed on the server other than Cobalt updates is Open WebMail.
> Are there any ideas as to what can cause such a problem? The last time
this
> happened I receiver "nameserver timeout" messages, so could this relate to
> my DNS  server (DNS is also hosted on this Raq).

Could be.  What program gave you this error?  And what operation were you
doing that gave it?  If you were sending email, where does your computer
hosting the mail client check for DNS, do you send through your RaQ's SMTP
server, your ISP's...someone else's?  I know I asked a lot of questions, but
these are the things I would look into if it was me troubleshooting the
problem.

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/