Sendmail startup

[kenwad]

When I start sendmail I get a million sendmail processes. They all say: sendmail: starting with [ip address] any idea why this would happen?

Just a note. This linux system is set up to receive email and forward to a groupwise server. when I do a mailq, the queue is empty. However "some" mail is not getting through and the only thing I see is literally 20 or 30 sendmail processes. On my home server I only see two. Sendmail accepting and sendmail que....

 

[RhythmAce]

This doesn't sound right at all. Are you saying that sendmail keeps trying to start a million times or that it is starting a million child processes?

 

[kenwad]

Its spawning a million child processes.

Some of it is cut off but this is the just of it.

root 12711 24331 08:56 ? sendmail: server [63.251.135.75]
root 12717 24331 08:56 ? sendmail: server [65.114.178.30]
root 12725 24331 08:56 ? sendmail: server [168.183.16.145]
root 12732 24331 08:56 ? sendmail: server [69.3.178.50]
root 12741 24331 08:57 ? sendmail: server [209.202.138.13]
root 12767 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: server [216.33.111.166
root 12768 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: server [198.45.24.30]
root 12813 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: server [64.57.189.160]
root 12819 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: server [209.26.4.9] cm
root 12820 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: startup with [165.170.
root 12821 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: startup with [64.57.18
root 12822 24331 08:58 ? sendmail: startup with [198.45.2
root 12830 24331 08:59 ? sendmail: server mail3068.flowgo
root 12837 24331 08:59 ? sendmail: startup with [64.57.18
root 12839 24331 08:59 ? sendmail: startup with [64.57.18
root 12840 24331 08:59 ? sendmail: startup with [63.99.22
root 12841 24331 08:59 ? sendmail: startup with [211.182.
root 12862 12830 0 09:00 ? sendmail: server mail3068.flowgo

 

[danielhozac]

Wow! How many interfaces/IPs does your server have?? [suprise]

Try reading through your [tt]sendmail.mc[/tt] and check for the [tt]DAEMON_OPTIONS[/tt] line. If you don't have this, or if it's commented out, you may want to set sendmail to only bind to one interface. //Daniel

 

[kenwad]

Only one nic . I've just started looking at this system.
the sendmail.mc has:

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1,Name=MTA')

Could this be spawning all the child processes?

 

[danielhozac]

That should make it only listen to one interface, and that is the loopback interface. This is probably not what you want, so I'd change the 127.0.0.1 to your NICs IP.

Back to the real problem. If you only have one NIC present, and sendmail is still trying to start with all these IPs, you might want to check if it is really reading your [tt]sendmail.mc[/tt] file.
Another thought may be that it is spawning a new process for each connection that is made to it. I am not sure how Sendmail handles this, but spawning a process is the most efficient way to do it. This is easily tested if you use [tt]telnet <server name> 25[/tt] and while you have that connection open, you see if there is a process named [tt]sendmail: server [<your IP/hostname>][/tt]. //Daniel

 

[kenwad]

Thanks.. I'll give this a try and see what happens..

 

[SimonPeh]

Hi,

If I cant even telnet <ipaddress/servername> 25 what should I do ?
I can only do a local telnet port 25 at the actual local host.
Any advise will be great.

Thanks !

 

[tarn]

Just a couple of quick notes (that may or maynot help)

1) you do not need to have sendmail running to 'send' mail only if your server is required to 'Listen' for and recieve mail. How are you fetching mail to forward, this could be the culprit?

2) Have you switched sendmail 'off' in /etc/xinetd/ as this could be someone/something calling sendmail from there and relaying off you ?

3) and last, a tip to see the whole lines in a ps -ef | grep sendmail, just change the ps -ef to ps -efww (add more w's to see more of the line probably 3 will sufice).

I hope this helps.

Good luck
L.

 

[compuveg]

The reason you can't telnet to port 25 on anything but 127.0.0.1 (localhost) is this line...

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1,Name=MTA')

That causes it to only work for the machine itself. I had a similar problem, but it was the opposite, I couldn't telnet to port 25 on 127.0.0.1, but it was receiving mail fine. It is because I had the following line...

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1,Addr=10.0.0.2,Name=MTA')

Sendmail ignored the first Addr=, and only listened for connections on 10.0.0.2. The resolution is to not have ANY 'Addr' setting, which will cause the machine to look for connections on ANY interface.

Since having no 'Addr' specifications works for me, I've not dug for the answer, but I suspect that multiple IPs to listen can be configured by using a space delimited list.