On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
> After the event it is - however exim does not currently log "I am
> locking and beginning work on message X" - whether it should is a
> good point. Finding this data in the log (without a "I have finished
> message X") is of course a pain!
Exim does have the feature that if you send an Exim process SIGUSR1 (on
most OS) it writes what it is doing into a special log file. There's a
script that finds all Exim processes and does this to them and then cats
the file. (However, this is rather OS-dependent and there are some
things I've just learned about that need fixing for some OS.)
Exim does log "I have finished message X", but only when it has done the
final delivery. I will consider putting in "I am starting on message X"
for queue runs. For new incoming messages the arrival message implies
this in the standard configuration. The complementary message is "I am
temporarily giving up working on message X" when a message cannot be
completed at that time.
What do people think about increasing the logs in this way? I guess it
won't add much for most messages, because they arrive and get delivered
straight away, so will only have the "arrival", "delivered to x", and
"completed" messages, as now. There will be a lot of boring log entries
for delayed messages, though. Sequences like
starting work on message X
address y: retry time not yet reached
ending work on message X
will be common. Is pulling this sort of information from the log more
useful than SIGUSR1?
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
