Re: [cobalt-users] Pop3 Server needs to be reset each morning

[Larry Smith <lesmith@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 18 November 2003 07:04, Jason Gottschalk wrote:
> Hello cobalt-users,
>
>   Every morning, just when I guess many of our customers start showing
>   up to work, I have to stop and start the e-mail services on my RAQ4i
>   because nobody can get their mail.
>
>   If I watch the maillog file with tail -f, I can see a steady stream
>   of sendmail activity but no pop3 activity.
>
>   As soon as I stop and restart the email services from the control
>   panel, I start seeing all of the pop3 logins and everything starts
>   working fine.
>
>   Do I have a configuration problem? or too many users?  There are
>   about 200 users getting e-mail from this server.
>
>
>   Thanks........

Sounds like you have "too much" activity for that service in a short period of 
time.  This has been discussed before.  All Linux kernels are designed to 
"shutdown" processes that are showing "abnormal" activity (just in case there 
is a problem).  the answer is to modify the /etc/inetd.conf line for your 
mail (pop3) to allow more processes:

Original:
pop-3   stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  in.qpopper -R

Modified:
pop-3   stream  tcp     nowait.500  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  in.qpopper -R

The dot (period) 500 says allow 500 processes per minute before shutting down 
the service.  Adjust this number with CAUTION since it can affect your server 
if you allow any one process to have too much time/space.

-- 
Larry Smith
SysAd ECSIS.NET
sysad@xxxxxxxxx