Huge load average on mail server

[Kirk Strauser]

At 2003-07-23T21:37:46Z, John Fox <jjf at mind.net> writes:

> What procedures would folks recommend for me to follow in order to try and
> determine the problem?

Step one: run `top' and see what process(es) are using the most CPU.  It may
be something not directly related to Sendmail.  For example, one of my
associates wrote his own bulk mail delivery program to inject a huge number
of messages into the outgoing mail (he works with an ecommerce site with a
large opt-in newsletter list).  A minor error in his code:

   if (numberOfRunningProcesses != 10) { fork(); }

instead of:

   if (numberOfRunningProcesses <= 10) { fork(); }

caused his program to occasionally flip out and large several hundred
running copies of itself (hi, Aaron!).
-- 
Kirk Strauser
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