Steve Kelley <steve(_dot_)kelley(_at_)sdrc(_dot_)com> writes:
I mentioned a problem to this mailing list a while back, and got
some pretty good information back concerning the problem.
Basically, we are seeing situations where procmail will hang for
a given account. When the first daemon hangs, all subsequent
daemons that get started for that account also hang. Eventually,
this causes our mail server to start to reject mail because of
system load average due to all the stuck procmails running for the
given account.
Here's the configuration:
Mail Server:
- Challenge L
- IRIX 6.2
- 512MB memory
- August 1st recommended/required SGI patch set is installed.
- Account HOME directories are NFS mounted to this system. The
HOME directories mostly come from Sun 2.4/2.5 servers.
The HOME disks are mounted using NFS2.
# procmail -v
procmail v3.11pre7 1997/04/28 written and created by Stephen R. van den Berg
<srb(_at_)cuci(_dot_)nl>
Submit questions/answers to the procmail-related mailinglist by sending to:
<procmail(_at_)informatik(_dot_)rwth-aachen(_dot_)de>
And of course, subscription and information requests for this list to:
<procmail-request(_at_)informatik(_dot_)rwth-aachen(_dot_)de>
Locking strategies: dotlocking, fcntl(), lockf(), flock()
Default rcfile: $HOME/.procmailrc
Your system mailbox: /var/mail/root
If you noticed, we have all the various "locking" mechanisms built into
procmail.
In this configuration, we are seeing problems with locking of the LOGFILE.
The LOGFILE is *NEVER* locked by procmail itself, and it's a bad idea
to lock it yourself, as hanging the whole thing becomes too easy. As
for having procmail use all the the various locking methods, did
procmail's autoconf script decided that you should do that, or did you
impose that yourself? If the latter, DON'T! The procmail autoconf
script is checking for broken locking implementations whose use may
cause procmail to hang, so just adding more than it thinks is safe is a
very bad idea. When I compiled procmail on some Irix 6.2 systems that
NFS mount from Solaris 2.5 servers the autoconf script decided that
flock() couldn't be used. What did your's say when you configured
procmail?
Philip Guenther