4.2bsd sendmail daemon/newaliases/dbm problem

[Ron Stanonik]

After we run newaliases, the sendmail daemon (running continuously,
started with -bd) fails to find some aliases.  Apparently the copy
of aliases.dir cached in the daemon by the dbm library sometimes
becomes outdated after newaliases (if a split occurs).  Since our
aliases.dir is less than DBLKSIZ, the cached copy is never updated.

Restarting the daemon after newaliases cures the problem, but a
better solution would probably be to "fix" the dbm library (reread
aliases.dir and retry if makdatum fails?).  The dbm library seems
intended for the case of infrequent updates.  Any suggestions?

This seems as though it should be a common problem, but I cannot
remember seeing it discussed, nor can I find any reference to it
in the xinu buglist.

Thanks,

Ron Stanonik
stanonik at nprdc.arpa