File descriptors missing on start up: stderr; Bad file number

[Ron Parachoniak]

I recently installed sendmail 8.12.8 (upgraded from 8.11.6) on a Solaris
8 box. We only use MailScanner for antivirus scanning (we run
spamassassin separately). Since upgrading sendmail, I get the following
messages in my logfile:

Mar  6 14:06:21 warp.physics.ubc.ca MailScanner[19512]: New Batch:
Scanning 1 messages, 2240 bytes
Mar  6 14:06:21 warp.physics.ubc.ca MailScanner[19512]: Virus and
Content Scanning: Starting
Mar  6 14:06:22 warp.physics.ubc.ca MailScanner[19512]: Uninfected:
Delivered 1 messages
Mar  6 14:06:22 physics sendmail[29988]: [ID 702911 mail.warning] File
descriptors missing on start up: stderr; Bad file number

It appears to be related to MailScanner.  Can anyone shed any light on
this?  Just for info, Don Jones posted a similar problem a while back.
He ended switching to RedHat and never solved the problem.

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Message from Don Jones:

Hi we are having a strange problem on 2 new 4.7 mailservers, both use
sendmail and mailscanner (which does spamassasin and antivirus
scanning). The configuration is one sendmail process that listens on
port 25 and dumps mail to a queue, then mailscanner picks up the mail
form this queue and does its scanning stuff and dumps the mail into a
second queue. a second sendmail process then takes the mail from the
second queue and delivers it.

On both these boxes we are getting this error in /var/log/maillog:

Dec  9 08:51:56 mx3 sendmail[39613]: File descriptors missing on
startup: stdin, stdout, stderr; Bad file descriptor

It ususlly occurs when MailScanner delivers the message to the second queue

Dec  9 02:17:38 mx3 MailScanner[37952]: Virus and Content Scanning:
Starting
Dec  9 02:17:38 mx3 sendmail[37980]: File descriptors missing on
startup: stdin, stdout, stderr;
Dec  9 02:17:38 mx3 MailScanner[37952]: Uninfected: Delivered 1 messages

Sendmail seems to spawn a second process to deal with the delivery and
this process is complaining. It still seems to be functioning ok.
Mailscanner has 5 processes which seem to be dying over time(over a few
days), which may be related to this problem, I need to try and fix this.

Can anybody explain what a "Bad file descriptor" actually is and how i
would go about fixing it?

Someone on the mailscanner mailing list suggested increasing the number
of filehandles ("ulimit -a" to show ulimit -n to increase) this didnt
seem to work - Im a bit out of my depth with this stuff - anyone have
any ideas/advice/explanations?

Thanks

Don Jones
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--
Ron

Ron D. Parachoniak   UBC Physics & Astronomy Dept    Ph. (604) 838-6437
System Manager       6224 Agricultural Road          Fax (604) 822-5324
rap at physics.ubc.ca   Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1