RHEL 3, sendmail and lock type

[Jens Ahlin]

> Jens Ahlin wrote:
>> So what you are saying is that flock is the one to use. The reason for
>> asking is that broken queue files are building up in the mqueue.in
>> directory, only the df files are present not the qf files. I don't know
>> if
>> this is related to a new problem causing messages to be delayed several
>> hours. ( in the maillog I see A LOT of "SpamAssassin cache hit for
>> message" for the messages that gets delayed. ) The server is not busy,
>> load average < 0.3. Mail is not lost, just delayed, the broken queue
>> files
>> are all junk mail.
>
> yes... that happens. I'm on CentOS 4.6 which uses the stock redhat
> sendmail 8.13.1. I'm using posix locking (correct for 8.13) but still
> see a slow build up of df files. I have a script that cleans up these
> files which I run a couple of times a year.
>
> I have been told that this was a bug in older versions of sendmail and I
> assume that RH never bothered to backport the patch. However, I can't
> confirm that.
>
> It has never been a problem for me - I'm 99.9% certain that the broken
> messages are actually dealt with correctly, just not properly cleaned up.
>
> here's my bash script:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> # clean up orphaned df* files in mqueue.in
> # no known cause for these files yet.
>
> /etc/init.d/MailScanner stop
>
> sleep 2
> dir="/var/spool/mqueue.in"
>
> file=`find $dir -mtime +1`
> for i in ${file}
>      do m=`basename ${i}`
>      j=${m:2}
>      if [ ! -e "${dir}/qf${j}" ]; then
>          mv ${i} /var/tmp/
>          fi
>      done
> echo
> df -hl
>
> /etc/init.d/MailScanner start
>
> exit 0
>
>
>>
>> I have flock specified in MailScanner.conf. If I change to default value
>> "Lock Type = " mail is still processed and delivered using POSIX.
>>
>> Any ideas ?
>>
>>      Jens
>
>
> --
> Greg Matthews           01491 692445
> Head of UNIX/Linux, iTSS Wallingford
>
> --

Ok. Thanks for the info. I'll try to pursue the delay problem and just
ignore the orphaned df files. I think I have found a message that somewhat
confuses mailscanner, I have to test this further during low traffic
hours. I have a set of qf/df files that maybe is the culprit.

          Jens