lock type

[Ken Goods]

David Lee wrote:
> Just done a fresh installation of Fedora Core 5, and installed MS
> (4.54.6) onto it.  FC5 includes sendmail version 8.13.6 .
> 
> I'm leaving the MailScanner.conf 'Lock Type' blank.  (Correct?)  The
> comment there says:
>    # How to lock spool files.
>    # Don't set this unless you *know* you need to.
>    # For sendmail, it defaults to "posix".
>    # For sendmail 8.12 and older, you will probably need to change it
>    to flock, # particularly on Linux systems.
>    # For Exim, it defaults to "posix".
>    # No other type is implemented.
>    Lock Type =
> 
> so I would expect it to use "posix".  (Correct?)
> 
> But watching /var/log/maillog I see:
>    ... MailScanner[10490]: Using locktype = flock
> 
> Am I misunderstanding something, or is something, somewhere not
> defaulting correctly?
> 
> [[[
> Background:
> 
>> From my years of using MS, I'm aware that the issue of "Lock Type"
>> comes 
> up on this list from time to time, but what I've encountered seems
> peculiar.
> 
> 1. This machine is just about to enter service as a main SMTP
> submission 
> host that will be very busy, so we need to have the correct setting.
> 
> 2. A very similar machine is being tested with Mailman and we've seen
> some peculiar things happening when it used an MS.conf containing an
> explicit 'Lock Type = posix' (its MS.conf had been rather too blindly
> copied from an earlier machine).
> ]]]
> 

Same thing happened to me when I recently built a new box (Centos 4.3). I
set mine to posix explicitly and everything seems to be running fine for the
last couple months.

HTH
Ken


Ken Goods
Network Administrator
AIA/CropUSA Insurance, Inc.
MIS Dept.
111 Main St.
Lewiston, ID 83501
(208)799-9023
http://www.cropusainsurance.com
kgoods at aiainsurance.com