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

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Lathem wrote:

> I am using a Raq XTR to host our corporate website, but it appears that the
> server quits receiving mail.

Sendmail will stop receiving mail under load.  It gets restarted by one
of the quarterhourly cron jobs.  Or you can restart it yourself.  A
mailserver not running for fifteen minutes will slow down mail, but it
won't stop it.

How busy is your server when this happens?  What does top look like
(including the memory usage)?

> I've restarted sendmail several times, and it
> still seems that the problem occurs. The odd thing is that everything is
> stable for a week or so, then it just quits working properly.

Is the system under heavy load at the time?  What does memory usage/top
look like at the time?

> 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). Any thoughts or suggestions
> are appreciated.

When did you get "nameserver timeout" message?  Where did you get it? 
Did you get it from the machine attempting to send the email?  Yes, it
could be a DNS problem.

Sendmail will continue to send mail even when it stops receiving mail;
the sendmail daemon that receives mail is not the same "instance" of the
program as those that are sending mail.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Linux and Cobalt/Sun/RaQ Consulting
nobaloney.net, P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA  92517
voice: +1 909 778-9980  *  fax: +1 909 548-9484