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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I had a unusual problem today - unfortunately I am
only able to give a description rather that a full log on the instance because
the symptoms aren't logged in syslog. (I am logging mail.debug level
BTW)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Briefly Mailscanner died and wouldn't restart even
after several attempts to run check_mailscanner. I will try to paraphase the
message it reported but I didn't record it as I was rather flustered at the
time. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It couldn't resolve an unknown
dependency concerning -t option at line 420 of
sendmail.pl; </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>that line reads</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>unlink "$OutQueue/$file";</FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>and concerns "Removing Duplicates from the outgoing
queue:\n";</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>after inspecting I decided to look at the outgoing
queue; there was a file present which co-incided with the time mailscanner
stopped. I moved this to another place and restarted mailscanner with
check_mailscanner and mailscanner started to work again.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1) I think that the time it stop coincided
with me killing mailscanner with kill -9 in order to then restart it with
different options. Clearly the queue was confused by a duplicate
file existing in the outgoing and incoming queues but also clearly
the code tries to cater for this situation and in my case failed. Anyone
help me with this might have been?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2) My other point relates to that fact that
this error doesn't seem seem to be logged in syslog even though
a diagnostic appeared on my console. Should I expect this to be logged
somewhere?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>3) is killing with kill -9 advisable?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>4) Finally my queues once restart processed 3.5
thousand messages in a 1.30 hours. I suspect that this could have been faster if
I adjusted the number of messages that could be process in a batch from 100 to
some number. Is there a sane upper limit for this?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Technical details</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>system: Sunblade 1000</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>OS: Solaris 8</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>MTA: Exim 3.35</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Version of mailscanner: 3.11-1</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>deliver in background set to yes </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>delivery type is queue</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Regards</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Ray Gardener</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sheffield hallam University</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>CIS</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>0114 224 4926</FONT></DIV>
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