Re: [cobalt-users] [Raq 3] Sendmail quits responding problem

[Gerald Waugh <gwaugh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Joseph R Brennskag wrote:

> Hello all...
>
> I have been trying to work through a problem I am having with sendmail.
> Sendmail will stop responding once the number of child processes reaches 12.
> When I run the command 'ps -aux' to check the open processes, I will see a
> number (usually 10 or 12) of 'stalled' or open sendmail processes like the
> following:
>
>
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
>
> root      1170  0.0  1.0  2368 1332 ?        S    09:52   0:00 sendmail:
> server rmny-stat-t05.citlink.net [170.215.147.5] cmd
>
> My question is how do I interpret what is happening on this line? This will
> be repeated several times at different times and the process never closes.
> A review of the mail log reveals that there is no one checking mail from
> that IP at that time nor sending mail at that time.  It is a customer's IP
> address. I have done a search but cannot find how to interpret that command.
>
> I know that I can increase the number of child processes allowed in
> sendmail.cf, but since these processes don't die it will not help.

The sendmail processes don't always close immeditately,
check "netstat -tupan | grep sendmail" (no "")
see what the status is of those connections

Gerald
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