Re: Am I being censored?...

[P3D Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>The other thing which happens is that if a machine on your mail path
>>takes overly long to respond to bobcat, the message (to you only) is
>>dumped...
>
>WAIT!  DUMPED?
>
>That is definitely not the way sendmail is supposed to work!
>(I would expect that from the USPS, a Quasi-Private Corporation)
>
>Sendmail is written to re-try sending the mail for 3 days then,
>if delivery is not possible, the mail is returned to the sender.
>
>Is list mail treated as something unimportant that probably
>should not have been sent in the first place so at the first
>sign of a problem it is dumped?
>
>What are you saying?
>
>allanwx@xxxxxxxxxx

What happens is that under Digital OSF2.0b, there seems to be 
a problem with sendmail - it has never been established exactly what
that problem is, but from time to time it seems to hang in it's
attempt to send mail to a particular machine. Now, the current
timeout is set to 1 hour, but that does not seem to function 
correctly. It seems unable to disengage from the target machine
if that machine does not respond in a timely fashion (and eventually
we start running into problems with excessive number of processes
and/or it taking 99% of the cpu cycles). Having searched the 
DEC archives and looked at the OSF managers list, I have never
found a solution to this problem, except to periodically scan the
process table looking for sendmail processes which have exceeded
the cpu time/percentage limits mentioned above. When this occurs,
the job is cancelled (via a PERL script), but, as indicated, it
only cancels to that one subscriber, not the message to the entire
list.

Not an ideal situation, but there does not appear to be a 
fix at this point short of moving to a different operating system/
machine. 

On the other hand, if anyone out there knows of a patch, or has 
a contact at DEC, or is a sendmail expert, I'd be MORE than happy
to try any suggestions :-)

THANKS

  -------- Bob Wier ----- wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -----
         2:31 PM Wednesday, September 18, 1996 
      Texas A & M University - Commerce
   keeper of the Motorola MC68HC11, ICOM Radio, 
Photo-3D,  Overland-Trails mailing lists and the 
     LDS Genealogy State Research Outlines 



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