From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 6 13:57:12 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 688DA16A480 for ; Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:57:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from mk-outboundfilter-2.mail.uk.tiscali.com (mk-outboundfilter-2.mail.uk.tiscali.com [212.74.114.38]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D82BE13C46E for ; Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:57:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) X-Trace: 1497074/mk-outboundfilter-2.mail.uk.tiscali.com/PIPEX/$MX-ACCEPTED/pipex-infrastructure/62.241.163.6 X-SBRS: None X-RemoteIP: 62.241.163.6 X-IP-MAIL-FROM: xfb52@dial.pipex.com X-IP-BHB: Once X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CAFZLqUc+8aMG/2dsb2JhbACSBZt0 X-IP-Direction: IN Received: from astro.systems.pipex.net ([62.241.163.6]) by smtp.pipex.tiscali.co.uk with ESMTP; 06 Feb 2008 13:57:09 +0000 Received: from [192.168.23.2] (62-31-10-181.cable.ubr05.edin.blueyonder.co.uk [62.31.10.181]) by astro.systems.pipex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C7B0E000083; Wed, 6 Feb 2008 13:57:08 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <47A9BCB0.8020309@dial.pipex.com> Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:57:04 +0000 From: Alex Zbyslaw User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-GB; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20061205 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lachlan@lkla.org References: <1153.137.153.0.37.1202210274.squirrel@sm.lkla.org> <69739C80-0639-4808-B5EB-0D9553826559@dpcsys.com> <30396.137.153.0.36.1202264253.squirrel@sm.lkla.org> <47A99B4E.1080707@dial.pipex.com> <28742.137.153.0.25.1202301936.squirrel@sm.lkla.org> In-Reply-To: <28742.137.153.0.25.1202301936.squirrel@sm.lkla.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Memory Error using Mailman on FreeBSD. How to debug? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:57:12 -0000 Lachlan Michael wrote: >>How big does the mailman process actually get? top will tell you. >> >> > >Mailman values don't budge. None of the mailman processes go over about >8.5M, which is what they are during idle time. > > Real puzzler. I'm surprised not to have at least one process growing, though. Maybe it's not using much CPU and you're not spotting it. Try running top, then sorting on size (o size inside top) then try your mailman email again. Make sure the top refresh rate is fast enough. s 1 inside top would do that, or even s 0 if desperate. Other things to try: Up the stack size ulimit -s 262144 inside the mailman startup. Again, I've had processes in the past which needed this. You'd have to check that from a shell (/bin/sh) and first to see that your system will allow a bigger value. If not, I believe that there is a sysctl to do that these days but don't have a modern enough system to look it up. A search for MAXSSIZ on google or mail archives may turn it up - that's the kernel option but requires a recompile. Of course, limits may not be the issue at all. They are a likely suspect given your error message, but maybe it's worth checking other bits of the mail system. Can you email a file of the size your are trying not through mailman? Maybe your MTA (sendmail/postfix etc) has a limit that somehow causes mailman to get this error. The final suggestion is to try to trace (ktrace, strace from ports) the process that is dying, but I suspect mailman forks a new process to deal with the email so how you catch it, I don't know. Many demons have a "run in foreground without forking" option which can be helpful to debugging, but I don't know if anything like that is possible in mailman. If you can figure out what mailman actually runs to process the email, you could ktrace that from the command line. Maybe the mailman mailing list could give you an incantation to try. --Alex