I've done some poking around on the mail server in question, and here's
the main piece of information that seems to narrow it right down to a
qmail problem (or things immediately affecting qmail):  When logged into
the mail server, telnet localhost smtp comes up right away, and the
server behaves fine, but telnetting to it's external IP doesn't.  It
hangs for about a minute and then finally responds (which is the same
behaviour they are seeing from the outside).  So it's not a network
related problem, and no other services on the box are affected by it, so
it has to be something qith qmail-smtpd (or tcpserver, since this is the
only thing tcpserver is managing).

	--Nick


"D. Taylor" wrote:
> 
> More details would be nice, but the only thing that
> I can think of off the top of my head is that if
> a particular remote host is down or appears to be
> under heavy load, qmail is designed to "be gentle"
> to the other side and back off and try again later.
> 
> In the past (and probably in the present, too), if
> a major mail host went down for say, a day, then
> came back online, she would get totally hammered
> by remote MTAs trying to send her their queued up
> mail all at the same time, thus creating more problems.
> 
> Many modern MTAs are more well-behaved.
> 
> D
> 
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Diane Barrett wrote:
> 
> > Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 14:19:57 -0700
> > From: Diane Barrett <dbarrett@desertdocs.com>
> > Reply-To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> > To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> > Subject: Email plug meeting
> >
> > This would be of great interest to me.  We are running qmail.  It ran fine
> > for about 8mos. Now at lest once a week SMTP stops recognizing requests for
> > 2-6hrs. then just starts working again.  I would be interested in hearing
> > from anyone who can help resolve issue. Thanks.
> >
> > Diane Barrett
> > Desert Document Services, Inc.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plug-discuss mailing list  -  Plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Plug-discuss mailing list  -  Plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss