Travis Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> We are running qmail on Solaris 8 with an Ultra 60. After several days
> of heavy email traffic, we begin to see <defunct> processes and
> eventually the server begins to choke (with more than 50+ defunct
> processes).
Sorry for replying this way, the original message must've slipped by...
We've been running Qmail here on Solaris machines for a loooong time and
I've never seen this behavior. We're not doing a ton of mail, only 10K
pieces of mail a day or so - but this load is almost undetectable on our
x86 mail server.
Now, I _have_ had machines with tons of defunct processes (several hundred,
but unrelated to qmail) and they have never caused a real problem. Defunct
processes do not consume any resources other than process table slots. I
wouldn't think 50 should anything to write home about on an Ultra60...
> Where do I look for the solution to fix this problem?
Perhaps qmail is misbehaving on your machine, but I'd check the other usual
suspects first. Get familiar with iostat, vmstat, mpstat, and sar at the
very least to diagnose Solaris problems. Proctool can give you nice overview
of what's going on on the machine as well.
Jody Baze
Blue Sky Tours
