hypermail processes hanging around

From: Josh Rotenberg <josh_at_parasite.com_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 09:28:10 -0800
Message-ID: <19981118092810.B19764_at_idiom.com>

hi,

ok, ive got a problem here, and i have a couple guesses as to why its happening, but id like to know if anyone else has a similar setup and has seen this behavior.

i have set up a list archive for my company using hypermail 2.0b3, procmail 3.11pre7, and fetchmail 4.6.5. we have one address that is subscribed to each list that we want archived, list-archiver. we have a user on the web server box use fetchmail to pop that users mail every five minutes or so and directly send it to procmail using fetchmail's mda option.

once procmail comes into play, the messages is matched against a procmail rule, and piped to hypermail where it finds its final resting place. the whole setup seems to work great. this is a sample procmailrc for one rule for a fake list:

---

MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
LOCKFILE=$HOME/.lockmail
TOP=/path/to/listarchive
HM="/usr/local/bin/hypermail -c ~/.hypermailrc -iu -l" AINFO="-b http://some.domain.com/listarchive" DATE=`date +'%m.%y'`

:0
* ^TO_.*mylist_at_.*
{

# make sure the list directory exists or create it
        DUMMY=`test -d $TOP/mylist || mkdir $TOP/mylist`

# make sure the date directory exists or create it
        DUMMY=`test -d $TOP/mylist/$DATE || mkdir $TOP/mylist/$DATE`

# copy the message, piping it to hypermail

	:0 cw:
	| $HM "mylist" -d $TOP/mylist/$DATE  $AINFO



	# save a copy in mbox format, too

	:0: 
	mylist-$DATE

}

---

anyway, this all seems to work, like i said. the problem, however, is that it seems that once in a while, hypermail doesn't finish its job, and i end up with a bunch of running hypermail processes, sometimes driving the load up quite high on the machine. i have about 12 lists being archived right now, and none of them are incredibly high traffic. i havent been able to reproduce the problem intentionally.

my guess is that its a locking problem somewhere along the chain, but im not sure where. it could very well have nothing to do with hypermail and be a procmail thing, too, but i figured i would cover all bases.

for reference, here are the stats:

Solaris 2.6
hypermail 2.0b3
procmail 3.11pre7
fetchmail 4.6.5

any help and insight is greatly appreciated.

thanks,

josh

-- 
	        	- josh rotenberg - 
	- josh_at_parasite.com 		josh_at_cp.net -  
	- www.parasite.com		 www.cp.net -
	      /* there should be no failures */

Received on Wed 18 Nov 1998 07:31:21 PM GMT