From owner-freebsd-current Sat Jan 11 13:12:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id NAA06307 for current-outgoing; Sat, 11 Jan 1997 13:12:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from grackle.grondar.za (D9lVFBNPbh1xZDjnou7h2g/8Ki71q94r@grackle.grondar.za [196.7.18.131]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id NAA06297 for ; Sat, 11 Jan 1997 13:12:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from grackle.grondar.za (QLhpvu73r4YKaLWKsLqkg9fVJvS6f3VS@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by grackle.grondar.za (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id XAA24216; Sat, 11 Jan 1997 23:11:48 +0200 (SAT) Message-Id: <199701112111.XAA24216@grackle.grondar.za> To: Bill Paul cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: My sendmail/NIS keeps on dying. Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 23:11:44 +0200 From: Mark Murray Sender: owner-current@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Bill Paul wrote: > > Apache has been attached for about 12 days > > now. I also have an ethernet card on ed0, and a tun0 device (currently > > unused but it or ppp0 will soon be my "outside" connection). > > > > The mail problem only started in the last 24 hours. Baffling.... > > It seems that in some cases, sendmail may roll over to using NIS if > attempts to do a DNS lookup for a particular site fail, usually due > to the remote nameserver being unreachable and the request timing out. > This has the unfortunate effect of causing ypserv to fork() off many > child processes that do DNS lookups and can cause the parent ypserv > to block. This problem doesn't occur with the new async resolver in > ypserv since it no longer needs to fork(). BINGO! I am running as a (sorta) SMART_HOST for South Africa. Right now there are 2+ sites that are unreachable, and one is so bad that DNS must have failed by now. > If you are lucky enough to catch sendmail in the act, try to run ps -auxw > a couple times and see how many ypserv processes are running. If you see Plenty ypserv's. > a lot, then this could be caused by ypserv blocking and you should update > to a more current -current to pick up the new ypserv. If you don't want > to do that, try turning off DNS lookups in ypserv: > > # cd /var/yp > # vi /var/yp/Makefile (comment out B=-b) > # touch /etc/hosts > # make Will do. (Done - do far so good - after 15mins - a bit of a record!) > Also make sure not to run ypserv with the -n flag. I never do. -- Mark Murray PGP key fingerprint = 80 36 6E 40 83 D6 8A 36 This .sig is umop ap!sdn. BC 06 EA 0E 7A F2 CE CE