bgo@PacBell.COM (Bud Odekirk) (09/21/89)
We recently converted all of our users from DPSS mail to Unix mail (mailx), we are having response problems, getting fork I/O error messages, and numerous other problems. We have about 460 users on 86 nodes. All of the Unix mail is located on one node (//s5/sys5/usr/mail). We contacted Apollo's Unix Mail expert in Chelmsford. His initial response was that unix mail (and mailx) was designed to work on a one-machine system such as a mainframe or mini. He questioned the use of it on a multi-machine system such as our token ring network. He feels the problems we are experiencing are a result of too many machines trying to perform a function designed for one machine to handle. I know that there are a lot bigger systems than ours that are using Unix mail. I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, recommendations, etc Thanks We have a very large mailx system configuration file (/usr/lib/mailx/mailx.rc) and I suspect that is the problem. /\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\ Bud Odekirk 2600 Camino Ramon, Room 3W600E San Ramon, Ca. 94583 415 823-1379 {att,bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!pbhya!bgo \*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\*/\
paul@SPEEDMETAL.ENGIN.UMICH.EDU (paul killey) (10/10/89)
We have about 460 users on 86 nodes. All of the Unix mail is located on one node (//s5/sys5/usr/mail). % wc -l /etc/passwd 6684 /etc/passwd % % ls -l /usr/spool/mail lrwxrwxrwx 1 root 28 Sep 29 23:43 /usr/spool/mail -> //mail/bsd4.3/usr/spool/mail % ls -lL /usr/spool/mail | wc 4067 32530 214157 % We run sendmail.5.59 plus some changes on the apollos. 5.61 with the same kind of changes applied will be installed pretty soon, I hope. The nature of the changes are for concurrency control when doing file i/o and in dealing with temporary failures when verifying addresses (rgy down, alias file not available, etc.). I changed sendmail, binmail, /usr/ucb/mail, and MH to co-operate in this endeavor. I also made a couple changes to dbm, and have sendmail not using dbminit(), but dbm_open() instead. My colleague and unindicted mail co-conspirator, Mark Giuffrida, has made every effort to get our code sprung out, but I have turned out to be quite an immovable object in this regard. But a current project is to get sendmail on all our platforms (Sun, Dec, apollo) to compile and run from the same set of source, and I will make that available. I'm *really* almost done! Thanks to some work at Berkeley, other source code has been declared to be free of AT&T license restrictions (like binmail, I believe) and I assume that will make it easier for people to deal with things. I understand a freely distributable version of dbm routines is coming down the pike as well (not from Berkeley). --paul