From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Sep 13 2:23:39 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE46A37B400 for ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 02:23:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk [81.2.69.218]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E8BC743E6A for ; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 02:23:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: from happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk ([IPv6:::1]) by smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id g8D9NYUc061466; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:23:34 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from matthew@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: (from matthew@localhost) by happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk (8.12.6/8.12.6/Submit) id g8D9NTpY061465; Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:23:29 +0100 (BST) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:23:29 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman To: Joni S Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fw: Mail spool file Message-ID: <20020913092329.GB60602@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> References: <00dd01c25aca$f77cf390$6c00a8c0@benny> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <00dd01c25aca$f77cf390$6c00a8c0@benny> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 09:12:04AM +0700, Joni S wrote: > I use Sendmail 8.9.3 with FreeBSD 3.3R on my email server running on > COMPAQ ProLiant 1600R (RAID 5 configured). Recently I had a problem > with my mail spool file. Many of my user's spool file are huge file > (400 to 800 MB). That's what --- 3 years old now? (3.3R was released in September 1999). Pretty elderly in computer terms. > Once the users retrieve the email using Qpopper in the server, they > got so many garbage inside their inbox. The garbage mail contain > some text that might be FreeBSD system, binary, log, or script file. > Immediately I checked mail spool files, and..... , yes, they contain > garbage message. I stopped SMTP and POP3 daemon, and I run fsck 10 > times until it reported no more errors. Then I copied all those mail > spool files to other directory. But, when I compared the original > mail spool file with the one that I copied, it was not identical. That sounds like a problem with your RAID system --- it seems to be randomly substituting filesystem blocks for the correct ones. This could be due to a bit error somewhere in the hardware. If you have any raid management software that came with your system, it would be a good idea to fire it up and see if it can diagnose problems with the hardware. One other point: there's not a lot of use running fsck against a mounted filesystem. You'll end up with fsck fighting against the kernel both trying to make changes to the same data. Unmount the file system before running fsck, and preferably drop to single user mode first. > My questions are: > 1. Why that many of the big spool files could contain garbage? > 2. Why that the copy process did not resulted in two identical file? You're seeing the effect in the mail spool files because they are probably the most active files on the system. If you check some other files that get quite a lot of write activity you might find similar corruption: something like the system log files /var/log/messages would be prime suspects. The copy process not producing identical results is just another symptom of the same trouble. With a hardware problem of the sort I suspect, you can't trust any of the files on the system to be returned containing the correct data. Time to call the support line and get an engineer in. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message