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Subject: Re: Postdrop
From: Lutz Jaenicke (Lutz.Jaenickeaet.TU-Cottbus.DE)
Date: Thu Nov 02 2000 - 11:47:58 CST

On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 10:50:00PM -0600, David W. Chapman Jr. wrote:
> I keep on getting these times where postdrop fails to have permissions to
> write to its directory and then it ends up in locking up my server by
> running more postdrop processes, anyone have any ideas on this? I'm running
> snapshot-20001030 and have only seen this problem since I upgraded, any
> idea?

Ok, let's have a closer look into things (I also go back to your first post):

According to the postfix manual pages and internal documentation, there are
only two possibilities, why postdrop might be called:
- An "smtpd" process was not called from "master" and could not contact
  the cleanup process (see src/smtpd/smtpd.c). This does not apply to your
  case.
- "sendmail" is called and the maildrop is not world writeable, so postdrop
  in setgid mode must be run.
Here, the sendmail case applies, especially as you write (in your first
posting), that at the same time you have a lot of "sendmail -t" processes
around.

From here things have to be researched.
There is a process spawning lots of "sendmail -t" processes. It is not
postfix but another process. Which process is responsible?

Best regards,
        Lutz 

-- 
Lutz Jaenicke                             Lutz.Jaenickeaet.TU-Cottbus.DE
BTU Cottbus               http://www.aet.TU-Cottbus.DE/personen/jaenicke/
Lehrstuhl Allgemeine Elektrotechnik                  Tel. +49 355 69-4129
Universitaetsplatz 3-4, D-03044 Cottbus              Fax. +49 355 69-4153