Re: [Exim] spool file locked for LONG times...

On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Philip Hazel wrote:

> > I have a message which has been in the queue for 79 minutes, and every
> > time exim does a queue run, i get "Spool file is locked" on this message.
>
> "Spool file is locked" means that some Exim process is working on the
> message. You can use "exiwhat" to find out which process it is, and what
> it thinks it is doing (unless the process is totally jammed). It is

I'll check this the next time it happens, but:

> possible for a large message with many recipients to take 79 minutes or
> more to get delivered, if some of the deliveries run slowly. However, if
> it goes on for several hours there may be a problem.

Yes I'm not talking about how long it takes to deliver to all the
recipients though - The scenario is something like this:

1. Email arrives for the majordomo mail list
2. Exim delivers the email to majordomo
3. Majordomo gives the email back to exim for delivery to
listname-outgoing

(all of the above happens almost instantaneously according to the exim log
file)

4. Most times exim starts delivering to all recipients on the list within
one minute of the above. Sometimes however, the message sits in the mail
queue for silly lengths of time, and then suddenly without anything being
changed, it starts sending! The silly length of them can be anywhere
between 10 mins and an hour. During the time it sits there, other email
for the same list comes in and gets sent off immediately. Forcing a queue
run doesn't help, as exim just reports that the spool file is locked.

What I have noticed is that when this happens, the contents of the
../spool/input directory contain 3 files for this message, -D, -H and -J.
I know the D & H are the data and header files, but I'm not sure what the
J file is.

I assume that when majordomo delivers the email to exim , a process is
started for it (correctly) but something is making the process just sit
there doing nothing...

If copies of my logs when this happens will help, I'll send some.

thanks
roger