[comp.mail.sendmail] sendmail, what does 'locked' mean

brianw@hpausla.HP.COM (Brian Wallis) (06/21/89)

Bofore I start delving into the source of sendmail, can anyone tell me
what the message

Jun 21 14:35:21 AA12177: locked

in /usr/spool/mqueue/syslog means.

I have had two mail items hang around on sendmail's queue for about 34
hours in the last week and get messages similar to the above after the
initial log of the mail being sent and every half hour thereafter
(presumeably when sendmail scans it's queue) until it is sent.

I'm running sendmail 14.5 on HPUX 6.5 on a 9000/350 and 14.4.1.1 on
HPUX A.B3.10 on a 9000/850, if thats relevant.

Brian Wallis			    (Quality/Productivity Engineer)
___________________________________________________________________
Hewlett-Packard Australian Software Operation (ASO)  //|  ___  ___
P.O. Box 439, Ringwood,     phone:                  // | |    |   |
Victoria 3134, Australia.   Inter. +613 879 1999   //--| !--| |   |
                                                  //   | ___| |___|
HP-UX Mail: brianw@hpausla.hp.com		 //
ACSnet address: brianw@hpausla.oz
HPdesk: Brian Wallis @ HPY200/UX

karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (06/21/89)

Sendmail logging a "locked" message means that there's an lfXXyyyyy
file lying around, which in turn means that some other incarnation of
sendmail is working on that particular queue item just now, e.g., a
queue-runner.  It should go away on its own when that sendmail
finishes its attempts (either re-queued due to non-fatal delivery
problems, or removed entirely if delivery is finished).  You should
make sure, however, that you remove all lf* files when your system
boots; otherwise, the "locked" items will never be processed by
anybody.

--Karl