SUMMARY: Problems with sendmail: Too many open files.

From: D. Douglas Valkenaar (dougv@clipper.zfe.siemens.de)
Date: Wed Jan 27 1993 - 08:18:10 CST


I've have gotten a few responses to my query

> I'm getting the following errors on my mail servers console during times
> of seemly heavy mail traffic:
>
> Jan 17 01:52:17 mack sendmail[24609]: AG24609: SYSERR: openmailer: pipe (to
mailer): Too many open files
> Jan 17 01:52:19 mack sendmail[24609]: AH24609: SYSERR: openmailer: pipe (to
mailer): Too many open files
> Jan 17 01:52:20 mack sendmail[24609]: AI24609: SYSERR: openmailer: pipe (to
mailer): Too many open files

birger@vest.sdata.no (Birger A. Wathne) responded with:

> You *could* be having some kind of problem where your mailserver
> forwards mail to itself in a loop. I have seen that kind of problem
> resulting in such messages.

Nope (see below)

stern@sunne.East.Sun.COM (Hal Stern - NE Area Systems Engineer) tried:

> crank up "maxusers" in your kernel configuration file. you've
> probably exceeded the system limit on open files (rather than
> the per-process limit).

Did that - no help.

Perry_Hutchison.Portland@xerox.com then suggested:

>
> > Is mail getting lost - or just delayed?
>
> Just delayed I suspect. The way to find out for sure is to look
> for a later entry (in loghost:/var/log/syslog, unless you've
> changed /etc/syslog.conf) for the same message ID, something like
>
> <stuff deleted>

I tried this and got messages like:

Jan 21 12:59:17 mack sendmail[9608]: AB09608: message-id=<9301212059.AB09608@mack.PhoneMail>
Jan 21 12:59:17 mack sendmail[9608]: AB09608: from=<@SCRVM2.ROLM.COM:ARCNET@ALMVMA>, size=1137, class=0
Jan 21 12:59:17 mack sendmail[9608]: AB09608: SYSERR: openmailer: pipe (to mailer): Too many open files
Jan 21 12:59:17 mack sendmail[9608]: AB09608: to="|IFS=' ';exec /opt1/local/procmail #dougv", delay=00:00:01, stat=Deferred

Eventually, this comes through . . .

Jan 21 12:59:24 mack sendmail[10262]: AB09608: to="|IFS=' ';exec /opt1/local/procmail #dougv", delay=00:00:08, stat=Sent
Jan 21 12:59:25 mack sendmail[9608]: AB09608: message-id=<9301212059.AB09608@mack.PhoneMail>
Jan 21 12:59:25 mack sendmail[9608]: AB09608: from=<@SCRVM2.ROLM.COM:ARCNET@ALMVMA>, size=5049, class=0

So it looks like most of the messages just get delayed. I still
experience an occasional lost message that I can't seem to explain. (I
can tell I'm losing messages because I'll be missing, say, part 6 of 11
of a file) When I notice a message missing, sure enough, there will be
"Too many open file" messages on the console. (And no, it doesn't show
up later)

> > Is there a way to fix this?
>
> You could try increasing the size of the open file table by building a
> new kernel with a larger maxusers setting. Also, I think there is an
> option you can specify in /etc/sendmail.cf to require all mail to be
> queued instead of delivered immediately -- if you do this you should
> probably also change the queue-run interval in the sendmail daemon
> startup line in /etc/rc.local . (The default is one hour, but 5
> minutes is probably a better choice if immediate delivery is disabled.)
> I believe there is more info on this in the sendmail section of the
> SunOS System & Network Administration manual.

Tried the first option, then couldn't seem to get queuing to work (set
dq but the messages seemed to get delivered right away anyway).

>
> A third possibility would be to replace sendmail with something like
> zmailer, which is reputed to be better at handling large volumes of mail.
>

Well . . . I'd rather not do this.

Any other suggestions? :-)



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:07:25 CDT