Mail not moving from /var/spool/mqueue.in to /var/spool/mqueue

[Steve Campbell]

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I'm usually way off base with my answers, so take all of this with a grain
of salt.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Catanzaro" <derek at ADCATANZARO.COM>
To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 3:53 PM
Subject: Mail not moving from /var/spool/mqueue.in to /var/spool/mqueue


> FC1
> MailScanner  4.63

This is a future alpha release Mr. Field is working on that will stop all
viruses, spam, and rootkits and make updates of kernels obsolete. MS is
truly a wonderful product. You probably mean 4.36.

> spamassassin 2.63
> sendmail 8.12.10
>
> I had a complaint of a delayed email.  I checked /var/spool/mqueue.in
> and there were no recent files.  I checked /var/spool/mqueue and it was
> empty as well.  I restarted MS a few times by doing "service MailScanner
> restart" after about the third time email started accumulating in
> /var/spool/mqueue.in however, nothing was getting sent to
> /var/spool/mqueue.
>

What is the amount of mail usually received in any given time? Is there
usually a constant flow of mail into the input queue or was this mail just
an isolated incident. Most of the time here, not always, expected mail is
held upstream for some reason.

> I then tried to restart MS again by using the following:
> service sendmail stop
> chkconfig sendmail off
> chkconfig --level 2345 MailScanner on
> service MailScanner start
>

I don't believe you are required to reset the chkconfig levels every time
you restart MailScanner. Try issuing "chkconfig --list MailScanner"  and
"chkconfig --list sendmail" to verify that they are set properly.

Your maillog is your friend here. Check to see that sendmail really stopped
before you restarted MailScanner. I would suggest using the init script to
do all of your MS stopping/starting and always wait for sendmail to tidy up
in between the two.

> Same thing, nothing was getting sent to /var/spool/mqueue
>
> I decided to bounce the server.  After the reboot everything seems to be
> working.  This is not the first time this has happened and I was
> wondering if anyone has any idea as to what could cause this or how to
> prevent these instances.  At the time I checked the server I was not
> having any DNS issues and the services said that MailScanner was
> running.  I am sure I'm do for another upgrade (probably go to FC3, use
> the latest MS, and use spamassassin 3.0).  Does anyone know if an
> upgrade is going to help or has anyone experienced the same issue with
> the latest and greatest releases?  Any suggestions are appreciated.
>

Newer is probably best, but I don't think this is your problem. Sorry I
can't be more specific to provide an answer without more details being
provided.

> Thanks for your time.
>

Steve Campbell
campbell at cnpapers.com
Charleston Newspapers

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