sendmail causes deadlock

[chelldis]

This message was relayed to the monitoring system from syslog: sendmail[15922]: k0N7oYh15922: to=dfv, delay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=0, dsn=5.1.1, stat=User unknown
Jan 23 08:50:34 hostname sendmail[15922]: k0N7oYh15922: k0N7oYi15922: DSN: User unknown

Next the system didnt recognise any commands issued by root and completely locked itself up. I had to reboot the system to get it running again.

specs: IBM,7026-B80, AIX5.2 ML2,sendmail v8.11 and running oracle 8.17

The system hasnt kept any logs on the issue for some odd reason, either in errpt or syslog.
Neither does the system run any tasks at the specific time of the malfunction.

anyone have a clue on where to start looking? or (hopefully) a solution?
thnx,
Michelle

 

[RhythmAce]

Was the mail system pretty reliable up to this point? Was it only the mail server that locked up or was it the whole system? Can you duplicate the problem or was it a one shot deal? Sorry to ask so many questions but there isn't a whole lot to go on. I've never heard of one email doing this.

 

[chelldis]

Day 2, thank god the system just kept running today, no weird errors of any kind, so I conclude that the problem didnt occur because of some faulty script. I do want to know what caused it though, for this makes the system unreliable in my point of view and that of my users.

RhytmAce answers to your questions
-The system is apart from some long running (yet) undefined SSA connectivity errors very reliable.
-The sendmail system hasnt ever caused any problems since installation.
-The whole system locked up on me and every other user working on it.
-I cant duplicate the problem because I have no clue at all what caused it, and after reboot the system started mailing in a regurlar way. NB: this system doesnt really function as an email server, the emails that are sent are reports sent to me triggered by a script that handles the backup and has never caused any problems before. The scripts are running for 2 years now and I havent modified them as of late.


hoping this will make things more clear for you.
Thanks for looking into it
Michelle