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

[Julian Field]

Warren Guy wrote:
> Sorry for the extraneous post, but just wanted to clarify a couple of 
> things:
>
> Warren Guy wrote:
>> 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.
>
> The processes weren't "dying", but rather seemed to hang.
If for some reason BSD vi was insisting on putting an all-out lock on 
the file while your colleague was editing it, then the child processes 
would indeed hang waiting for access to the file. It should only be 
opening it for read though. Never seen this one before.

Jules

-- 
Julian Field MEng CITP CEng
www.MailScanner.info
Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store

MailScanner customisation, or any advanced system administration help?
Contact me at Jules at Jules.FM

PGP footprint: EE81 D763 3DB0 0BFD E1DC 7222 11F6 5947 1415 B654
PGP public key: http://www.jules.fm/julesfm.asc


-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.