log message MailScanner: waiting for children to die

[Rob Gills]

G'day All,

This is not a problem posting, just want to share something that discovered while setting up a new system last week. Perhaps it will assist someone else one day.

I administer quite a number of email systems, and have been using the MailScanner/Sendmail/Mailwatch combination for a long time. When I setup a replacement server for a hardware upgrade, I, of course, use copy and paste to get all the config files whipped into shape, duplicating the retiring server configuration where applicable.

During the course of building a replacement server recently, I installed MailScanner and the ClamAV/Spamassassin package, and tested the install, everything was perfect. 

I then install Mailwatch and the problem started. MailScanner would start at boot and then within two minutes kill and restart continuously. Mail would be processed thru the server, but as a result of the constant MailScanner restarting, mail would process slowly. The following line would appear repeatedly in the messages log file:

<snippet>

MailScanner: waiting for children to die: Process did not exit cleanly, returned 255 with signal 0

<end snippet>

I knew that Spamassassin was running clean, so I tried MailScanner --debug, and also checked all the version info with MailScanner -v. All the version info seemed ok. The debug run would spit out what seemed to be an erroneous message, sometimes the first message below, sometimes the second message below:

<snippet>

Commmit ineffective while AutoCommit is on at /usr/lib/MailScanner/MailScanner/CustomFunctions/MailWatch.pm line 93, <CLIENT> line 1.

<end snippet>


<snippet>

Can't use an undefined value as an ARRAY reference at /usr/lib/MailScanner/MailScanner/CustomFunctions/MailWatch.pm line 223

<end snippet>


It turned out that the error that I made was to have inadvertently pasted &MailWatchLogging on TWO lines in MailScanner.conf as follows:


<snippet>

Always Looked Up Last = &MailWatchLogging

Always Looked Up Last After Batch = &MailWatchLogging

<end snippet>


As soon as I commented out the 'Always Looked Up Last After Batch = &MailWatchLogging' line......the system works flawlessly. 

I just wanted to share this in case it helps someone someday.

Kudos to Julian for the fantastic contribution that you make to email administrators sanity!!

Kudos to all who contribute here by answering posts and assisting with resolutions!!


Cheers,

Rob Gills
Ontario, Canada




-----Original Message-----
From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Götz Reinicke
Sent: May 2, 2007 2:05 AM
To: mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
Subject: log message MailScanner: waiting for children to die

Hi,

we recently upgraded our mailserver from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 to 
RHEL 5. We use the latest release of mailscanner and sendmail-8.13.8.

Everything is up and running very good, beside I do get the following 
message lots of time:

MailScanner: waiting for children to die: Process did not exit cleanly, 
returned 255 with signal 0

I'm using our "old" configuration from RHEL4 which worked without the 
message for a couple off years.

Any ideas or tips?


Best regards

Götz Reinicke
-- 
Götz Reinicke
IT Koordinator

Tel. +49 7141 969 420
Fax  +49 7141 969 55 420
E-Mail goetz.reinicke at filmakademie.de

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Eintragung Amtsgericht Stuttgart HRB 205016
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Dr. Christoph Palmer, MdL, Minister a.D.

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Prof. Thomas Schadt

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