PHP mail() woes

[Floyd Arguello]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 9:09 PM,  <fouldragon at aol.com> wrote:
> Weird amusement:
>
> #service qmail stop
> Stopping service qmail:#
> (for some reason, it never says "[OK]", wether you stop or restart)
>
> Run the "send 50 messages to hopeless at invalid.invalid" script.
>
> Wait for it to finish - doesn't report the mail() calls failed
>
> restart in a panic (it is a production box after all :P)  service qmail
> start
>
> They seem to have processed normally, like it respawned qmail on demand
> of the php script requesting sendmail.  Is that how it's supposed to
> operate?
>
> Also, reviewing the logs, it seems that it occurs in blocks... you'll
> get a bunch of failures for a few days, then none for 20 days or so at
> a time (the server typically gets 15-30 or so days uptime, and it's at
> 29+)


fouldragon - it could be that your server didn't have enough available
resources to generate the processes, or it could be that mail
processes were hanging and hit their limit.

Checking the server is easy enough with top and ps. /var/log/maillog
should give you some clues to your mailserver. If not, you could try
increasing verbosity for a while. Also check to see if you're using
mbox or maildir.

Floyd