On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Ian Pallfreeman wrote:
> I'm trying to get exim 1.61 to use gdbm on a FreeBSD box, without much luck.
>
> I've changed the makefile and linked in gdbm (-g), and it seems to me that
> it's doing its own locking and so exim can't ever open wait-smtp or retry
> for writing, even when newly-created. Have I missed something here?
I seem to recall problems in the past with gdbm and locking, but I don't
really know anything about gdbm. Exim does its own locking because the
paradigm used by NDBM and DB is not to do their own locking - i.e. to
behave like traditional Unix files.
> FWIW, I'm doing this because I suspect a bug in the db package. I'm getting a
> heap of dbm-related problems whilst subjecting exim to intense load, including
> trashed .db files, memory hogging, SEGVs and looping deep inside db->get/put.
Are you seeing these problems on 1.61? There were some fixes put on as a
result of similar phenomena on previous releases. If the problems still
exist and you are able to track down the cause (either in Exim or in db)
I and a lot of other people will be most grateful.
It may be that I should consider providing a USE_GDBM option which
suppresses Exim's locking of DB files so that gdbm can do its own thing
(assuming its own thing works - any gdbm experts out there?). The change
is trivial: simply cut out lines 104-120 of the db.c file.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
