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