MailScanner children hanging on startup when spam.lists.conf file is open by another process

[Julian Field]

Interesting locking problem. Does this only happen on BSD?

Warren Guy wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I encountered a strange problem this evening, where a colleague had 
> inadvertently left open a terminal on our mail server with the 
> spam.lists.conf configuration file open in vi, which seemed to cause 
> the MailScanner child processes to die when they (re-)started.
>
> At first I thought perhaps SpamAssassin or ClamAV was causing some 
> problem, but the problem still occurred with spam checks and virus 
> scanning disabled from MailScanner.conf.
>
> Has anyone encountered similar behaviour? This machine is running 
> MailScanner 4.64.3, Postfix 2.1, Perl 5.8.8 on FreeBSD 4.
>
> Output from mailscanner log:
>
> (from where MailScanner appeared to die, when the last child restarted):
>
> Apr  2 17:22:20 (mailserver) MailScanner[53468]: MailScanner child 
> dying of old age
> Apr  2 17:22:20 (mailserver) MailScanner[46053]: MailScanner E-Mail 
> Virus Scanner version 4.64.3 starting...
>
> (when restarting):
>
> Apr  2 20:56:46 (mailserver) MailScanner[35284]: MailScanner child 
> caught a SIGHUP
> Apr  2 20:56:46 (mailserver) MailScanner[35209]: MailScanner child 
> caught a SIGHUP
> Apr  2 20:56:46 (mailserver) MailScanner[33392]: MailScanner child 
> caught a SIGHUP
> Apr  2 20:56:46 (mailserver) MailScanner[29785]: MailScanner child 
> caught a SIGHUP
> Apr  2 20:56:46 (mailserver) MailScanner[46053]: MailScanner child 
> caught a SIGHUP
> Apr  2 20:56:53 (mailserver) MailScanner[23048]: MailScanner E-Mail 
> Virus Scanner version 4.64.3 starting...
> Apr  2 20:56:58 (mailserver) MailScanner[23050]: MailScanner E-Mail 
> Virus Scanner version 4.64.3 starting...
> Apr  2 20:57:03 (mailserver) MailScanner[23054]: MailScanner E-Mail 
> Virus Scanner version 4.64.3 starting...
> Apr  2 20:57:09 (mailserver) MailScanner[23058]: MailScanner E-Mail 
> Virus Scanner version 4.64.3 starting...
> Apr  2 20:57:14 (mailserver) MailScanner[23069]: MailScanner E-Mail 
> Virus Scanner version 4.64.3 starting...
>
> Which is where it hangs.
>
> Output from `ps`:
>
> postfix 25760 0.0 1.9 19936 19308 ?? I 9:05PM 0:00.11 MailScanner: 
> starting children (perl5.8.8)
> postfix 25561 0.0 1.9 19936 19308 ?? I 9:05PM 0:00.11 MailScanner: 
> starting children (perl5.8.8)
> postfix 25495 0.0 1.9 19936 19308 ?? I 9:04PM 0:00.11 MailScanner: 
> starting children (perl5.8.8)
> postfix 25494 0.0 1.9 19936 19308 ?? I 9:04PM 0:00.11 MailScanner: 
> starting children (perl5.8.8)
> postfix 25493 0.0 1.9 19936 19308 ?? I 9:04PM 0:00.12 MailScanner: 
> starting children (perl5.8.8)
> postfix 25492 0.0 1.8 19300 18760 ?? Is 9:04PM 0:00.01 MailScanner: 
> master waiting for children, sleeping (perl5.8.8)
>
>

Jules

-- 
Julian Field MEng CITP CEng
www.MailScanner.info
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Contact me at Jules at Jules.FM

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