sendmail locks

[Karl Tombre]

We have a strange problem occuring now and then on our VAX, running 4.2 Bsd.

Sometimes, mail to be processed by sendmail gets bogged down in
/usr/spool/mqueue for a while, probably because of too high load on
sendmail (am I right here ?). But logically, when sendmail gets idle again,
it should be able to process them again (at the next "process queue" event).

The problem is that there remains a lf* file (i.e. a lock file) and the mail
may remain in mqueue for several days... When the VAX is rebooting, the mail
gets finally delivered. That is not very reliable...

I can manually remove the lock files and then do a sendmail -q to process
the mail ; however, I don't understand why the lock remains... Is there an
explanation ?

--- Karl Tombre @ CRIN (Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Nancy)
EMAIL : tombre at crin.crin.fr  --   tombre at crin.UUCP
POST  : Karl Tombre, CRIN, B.P. 239, 54506 VANDOEUVRE CEDEX, France
PHONE : +33  83.91.21.25