On Mon, 11 Jan 1999, Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
> | FreeBSD). The DU system started spawning a lot of qmail-smtpd and
> | qmail-queue processes, until the point where the process table was
> | max-ed out and this almost brought the system down. Fortunately I
> | managed to kill off the smtpd/queue processes and turn off mail
> | reception until the network was up again. I suppose, in retrospect,
> | I should have ulimited the qmail daemons? Or was there something
> | else I could have done?
>
> Use the -c option to tcpserver to limit the number of incoming
> connections.
only snag is: I don't use tcpserver...or at least I can't. I tried
tcpserver at one time but it turned out that it would reject mail
forwarded from an MS exchange server. I don't remember the exact error but
once I switched back to inetd it was ok. I'll try and dig up that error
msg again...maybe you guys can tell me what's wrong :)
> | Poking around the queue dirs on the DU box, I saw that 99% of the
> | queued messages were zero length, while a handfull had complete
> | messages and others only partial content. I deleted the the entire
> | queue (since it was useless anyway after saving the complete
> | messages), or rather, deleted the entire /var/qmail and
> | re-installed. Question is, did I actually lose any mail??
>
> Only inspecting the log can answer that question, I think.
unfortunately, the logs didn't have anything at all :(
> | What does qmail do when it is unable to complete sending a message
> | to another qmail server?
>
> The message remains in the queue and are retried for up to a week.
> (This is guaranteed, as long as the file system is intact and no ones
> messes with the queue.)
Ok, so if the sending qmail receives an OK from the recipient qmail it
will delete the message from its (sending) queue. If a message is in the
process of sending but the recipient smptd crashes, then the sending
qmail-remote times-out and keeps the msg in the queue to be re-tried again
later. Is that right?
If I see seemingly complete msgs on the recipient queue, and knowing that
local deliveries are working properly, does this mean the msg really isn't
complete yet and smtpd hasn't sent out an OK yet?
So, if I trash the queue on the recipient side, after shutting down smptd
connections, I shouldn't lose any msgs, right? (assuming that the sending
side is ok.)
If this is the case, then I can sleep a little easier :)
thanks,
--shing
