SUMMARY: Heavy Mailproblems (NFS ???) with the SunInfo Abonnement

From: Herbert Wengatz (hwe@uebemc.siemens.de)
Date: Thu Dec 21 1995 - 06:00:43 CST


Hi there!

My original Posting was:

> Hi fellow Sun-managers!
> I've currently heavy difficulties with "giant" Mailfiles.
> Every monday morning I get the SunInfoPatchlistDB from:
> aboserv@suninfo.sun.de.sun.de (suninfo Notes Abonnement Server).
> Since I'm the one in charge for the patches, which shall be
> installed here, I'm in the need of these informations.
> This special mailfile from sun is meanwhile nearly 12 MB huge (!)
> and constantly growing. - When I started, 18 months ago, it was
> about 9 MB huge.
> To my great grief, this file is mostly (maybe 70% !) redundant. This
> means, Sun simply concatenates all Patch-Readmes they have into one
> file. They still didn't manage it to keep the
> Patch-Install-Instructions out of the Readme-File. - This means,
> with every of the about 4000 PatchReadmes, you get a complete set of
> Installation-Instructions. Whoa. - If this is not a waste of
> bandwidth, what then ? This is not really my Problem, but Sun's.
> OK. I get this monster every monday morning.
> My environment consists of 1 mailserver (it's spooldirectory is
> mounted remote via NFS to every machine), my Home-Server and my
> machine. My home is of course mounted via NFS, too.
> All machines are running Solaris 2.3. with several patches (all
> recommended).
> What happens to me now, is that everytime I get this mail, my other
> mails get fu..ed up.
> I tried other NFS-mount-options, different mailtools (exmh &
> mailagent). But no luck at all.
> My mails get partially concatenated (Their headers are still
> completely included!), they loop locally at the delivery - in a very
> unpredictable way which makes my mailtools hang and I get up to 50
> (or so) messages in the mailhaeders, that the same mail was
> delivered.
> My question is:
> 1.) Is there anybody out there ? (No, not Pink Floyd...) - Has anone
> out there run into similar problems ?
> 2.) Who get's this mail also? - How do you handle it ? - Do you have
> the same or similar problems ?
> Any help appreciated!

> I'd like best, sun would stop wasting bandwidth. Else the only
> solution for me will be to cancel the subscription of this Abo,
> which would mean to me that I will have to go completely new ways to
> get my Informations.

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The responses were quite a few only. But nevertheless they should
become an extra-applause! They were:

matt@lordmuck.itd.uts.edu.au Jas (Matthew K)
bern@TI.Uni-Trier.DE (Jochen Bern)
fm@sc14.germany.sun.com (Florian Meyer - Sun Germany Product Support - Munich)

And a special "Thank you" goes to Casper Dik, whom I emailed directly, since
I know his great knowledge about all sorts of Sun-related problems.

Casper Dik <casper@holland.sun.com>
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The contents of the answers was mostly not quite what I meant.

They all believed at first that I have some kind of "space"-problem, which is not true.

Matt was on the right trace, he told me to use the "-noac"-Option for NFS-mounting
maildirectories. But this part of the solution was already in use, as far as it could
be used since it makes your NFS-performance drop to the ground (for that mount).

Casper had some more hints for my mount-paramters:
"You're not mounting any directories soft, right?"

and told me to install all available patches... :
"Make sure you have uptodate patches installed, both the lockd and
kernel jumbo patch and if you're using mailtool, also the mailtool
patch."

If everything fails, he told me:
"If things get out of hand, you may want to try running mailx, and
perhaps run it on the server."

At least, he seems to have not a high opinion about sun's mailtool. Because
when I told him that I believe using mailx is like going back to the middle
ages, he told me:
"It works, more than you can say about mailtool."
This is something I can only applaud to.

The best news for me he had was:
"The newer patches (fro 2.5) have a readme seperated from he installation
instructions."

Jochen Bern from Trier was very kind and tried to help, but it seems
the use and configuration of e-mail goes ways which only our Lord in
heaven knows. - The last mail from Jochen I got, was that for some
mysterious reasons his mailtool decided to garble a huge amount of *his*
mails. - Good Luck, Jochen!!!!

And now my resume:

I can't change anything of my current installation.

I did already most of the things I was told. (Except for changing the
Solaris - Release or updating to the latest Patch-Releases, which I can't
do, since I'm not root for the Worstation I sit at. ( I do administrate
several others! )

Since my posting, Sun seems to have cancelled the support for this mailbomb.
(I got none last monday) And for the future I see some light at the horizon
since they managed it to kick out the Installation instructions from the
Readmes so this mail will perhaps be 70% smaller.

So for now I could keep my mouth shut. - But I still see some severe danger
for all of us!

Since I had this difficulties, they are for real and they may reappear in
any other way somewhere else. - It must not be a mailtool! - How about an
important Database ???

Well. I'm not the one in charge for that. I'll sit and wait and see.
Maybe I had only some bad luck (for several months...) but I can't
beleive that I'm the only one.

Good Luck, and merry XMAS to all of you!

Herby
__________________________________________________________________________
Herbert Wengatz,82049 Pullach |Disclaim: This Mail is my own opinion, not
Office :hwe@uebemc.siemens.de |that of my company.
Private:hwe@rtfact.muc.de |--- When I was a child, I was told everyone
http://www.muc.de/~hwe/rtfact |can be President. Now I start believing it.
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