start multiple sendmail daemons from rc.conf?

[Doug Hardie]

On Nov 25, 2003, at 12:07, Andy Farkas wrote:

> Charles Swiger wrote:
>
>> On the other hand, too many sendmail processes can thrash the 
>> system...
>
> You mean "can TRASH the system..."!
>
> I hate sendmail:
>
> Nov 21 10:43:11 <mail.info> hewey sm-mta[71861]: hAL0h3UQ071861: 
> delaying=EHLO, load average=5 >= 2
> Nov 21 10:43:11 <mail.info> hewey sm-mta[71850]: hAL0gdUQ071850: 
> from=<keebxfjp at hotmail.com>, size=1991,...
> Nov 21 10:43:12 <mail.notice> hewey sm-mta[78325]: rejecting 
> connections on daemon MTA: load average: 5
> Nov 21 10:43:12 <mail.notice> hewey sm-mta[78325]: rejecting 
> connections on daemon MSA: load average: 5
> Nov 21 10:43:14 <mail.info> hewey sm-mta[71848]: hAL0gcUQ071848: 
> from=<owner-freebsd-isp at freebsd.org>, size=3265,...
> Nov 21 10:43:18 <mail.info> hewey sm-mta[71861]: hAL0h3UQ071861: 
> from=<owner-freebsd-current at freebsd.org>, size=5435,...
> Nov 21 10:43:21 <kern.crit> hewey /kernel: swap_pager: out of swap 
> space
> Nov 21 10:43:21 <kern.crit> hewey /kernel: swap_pager_getswapspace: 
> failed
> Nov 21 10:43:22 <kern.err> hewey /kernel: pid 215 (mysqld), uid 88, 
> was killed: out of swap space
> Nov 21 10:43:22 <kern.err> hewey last message repeated 5 times
>
> So even though sendmail says it is rejecting connections (twice!), it 
> then
> goes and accepts two more! Grrr.

Thrash is correct and it would appear it happening from the messages 
above.  Sendmail checks the load average each time a new request is 
received.  If the average is above the threshold it puts out that 
message and doesn't handle the request.  Obviously, when  PIDs 71848 
and 71861 were started the load average was below the threshold.  
Running out of swap space is never going to be a good thing.  You need 
more memory or more swap space.


-- Doug