[comp.unix.sysv386] sendmail broken??

tsh@hila.hut.fi (Timo Hyvonen) (12/05/90)

I get these to my /usr/adm/lpd-errs -file. System is Interactive 386/ix 2.0.2.

Dec  5 10:57:07 localhost sendmail[7967]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 11:27:07 localhost sendmail[7973]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 11:57:07 localhost sendmail[7994]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 12:27:07 localhost sendmail[8000]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 12:57:07 localhost sendmail[8016]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 13:27:07 localhost sendmail[8034]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 13:57:07 localhost sendmail[8068]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 14:27:07 localhost sendmail[8076]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 14:57:07 localhost sendmail[8102]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
Dec  5 15:27:07 localhost sendmail[8126]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total


Where should I start looking for the reason? This happens every now and then
and really randomly, there seems to be no real reason for it - it just starts
one day and continues until I boot the machine. I should really get rid of 
this error, there's gonna be another sysadmin in the system and he is not
even this much experienced. And that's not a lot.



* Timo Hyvonen  ***************************************** +358 - 0 -       *
* tsh@hut.fi    *	     How do you do?		*  468-2241 (home) *
* JMT 1A132,    *	     Very well thank you.	*  451-3523 (work) *
* Espoo Finland *****************************************  451-3518 (fax)  *

tim@delluk.uucp (Tim Wright) (12/10/90)

In <1990Dec5.084730.5227@santra.uucp> tsh@hila.hut.fi (Timo Hyvonen) writes:

>I get these to my /usr/adm/lpd-errs -file. System is Interactive 386/ix 2.0.2.

>Dec  5 10:57:07 localhost sendmail[7967]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
>Dec  5 11:27:07 localhost sendmail[7973]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total

>Where should I start looking for the reason? This happens every now and then
>and really randomly, there seems to be no real reason for it - it just starts
>one day and continues until I boot the machine. I should really get rid of 
>this error, there's gonna be another sysadmin in the system and he is not
>even this much experienced. And that's not a lot.

This isn't an error, this is your sendmail daemon waking up every half-hour
to scan the queue and deliver mail. The message goes in lpd-errs 'cos ISC
didn't bother to rewrite the syslogd.conf file to make it do something
sensible. If you lookup syslog and hack at said file, you can get rid
of this message since I guess it's at something like LOG_INFO level i.e.
not very interesting !!
Here's mine for information
--------------------------------Cut Here--------------------------------------
*.err;kern.debug;auth.notice			/dev/console
kern.debug;daemon,auth.notice;*.err;mail.crit	/usr/adm/messages
lpr.debug					/usr/adm/lpd-errs
daemon.debug					/usr/adm/daemon-errs
mail.debug					/usr/spool/mqueue/syslog

*.alert;kern.err;daemon.err			root,tim

*.emerg						*
--------------------------------Cut Here--------------------------------------
You can remove the mail.debug if you like.
Hope this helps,
Tim
--
Tim Wright, Dell Computer Corp. (UK) | Email address
Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1RW       | Domain: tim@dell.co.uk
Tel: +44-344-860456                  | Uucp: ...!ukc!delluk!tim
"What's the problem? You've got an IQ of six thousand, haven't you?"

klm@gozer.UUCP (Kevin L. McBride) (12/15/90)

In article <1990Dec5.084730.5227@santra.uucp> tsh@hila.hut.fi (Timo Hyvonen) writes:
>I get these to my /usr/adm/lpd-errs -file. System is Interactive 386/ix 2.0.2.
>
>Dec  5 10:57:07 localhost sendmail[7967]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
>Dec  5 11:27:07 localhost sendmail[7973]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
..
>
>Where should I start looking for the reason? This happens every now and then
>and really randomly, there seems to be no real reason for it - it just starts
>one day and continues until I boot the machine. I should really get rid of 
>this error, there's gonna be another sysadmin in the system and he is not
>even this much experienced. And that's not a lot.

I used to see this problem quite a bit on 2.0.2 myself.  It appears to
be fixed under 2.2.

First, the reason that these messages are being put in /usr/adm/lpd-errs
is that '/etc/syslog.conf' is wrong.  The contents of my syslog.conf file
follows:

=========cut here=============
*.err;kern.debug;auth.notice			/dev/console
kern.debug;daemon,auth.notice;*.err;mail.crit	/usr/adm/messages
mail.debug					/usr/spool/mqueue/syslog

*.alert;kern.err;daemon.err			root

*.emerg						*
=========cut here=============

I never really did figure out why sendmail felt that it had to go
rebuild the alias database at every queue interval (typically 30 minutes
or 1 hour) but that's where the message is coming from.  It's not a
problem, really, just an annoyance.

Yes, sendmail is braindead... but it can be made to work.

>* Timo Hyvonen  ***************************************** +358 - 0 -       *
>* tsh@hut.fi    *	     How do you do?		*  468-2241 (home) *
>* JMT 1A132,    *	     Very well thank you.	*  451-3523 (work) *
>* Espoo Finland *****************************************  451-3518 (fax)  *

Hope this helps.

-- 
Kevin L. McBride     |Contract programming (on and offsite)   |Brewmeister and
President            |X, Motif, TCP/IP, UNIX, VAX/VMS,        |Bottle Washer
MSCG, Inc.           |Integration issues, Troubleshooting.    |McBeer Brewery
uunet!wang!gozer!klm |Reseller of ISC UNIX and Telebit Modems.|Nashua, NH

james@bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen) (12/16/90)

In <1990Dec15.140142.23689@gozer.UUCP>, klm@gozer.UUCP (Kevin L. McBride)
	wrote:

| Dec  5 10:57:07 localhost sendmail[7967]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total
| Dec  5 11:27:07 localhost sendmail[7973]: 4 aliases, longest 16 bytes, 74 bytes total

> rebuild the alias database at every queue interval (typically 30 minutes
> or 1 hour) but that's where the message is coming from.  It's not a
> problem, really, just an annoyance.

sendmail is designed to use a dbm database to hold the aliases.  When
you compile sendmail without dbm, it sort of acts like it needs to
rebuild the database file every time it is run, as a method of reading
in the aliases file.  Berkeley probably isn't terribly interested in
doing more graceful support for SysV...

> Yes, sendmail is braindead... but it can be made to work.

sendmail actually works pretty well.  The difficulty of sendmail.cf is
greatly exaggerated - if you can use grep(1) for anything more
complicated than a constant string, you can figure out rulesets.

The sendmail source is freely available.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james@bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
Dell Computer Co    9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789