Author: W B Hacker Date: To: exim users Subject: Re: [exim] Interupted system call
User Dm wrote: > On Sun, 29 Oct 2006, Vitaly A Zakharov wrote:
>
>>> I'm wondering why I'm seeing these:
>>
>>> Connecting to cable1.net [204.251.15.172]:25 ... LOG: PROCESS
>>> 84524 delivering 1Gcnjb-000P81-IZ to cable1.net [204.251.15.172]
>>> (timdoyle@???)
>>> LOG: PROCESS
>>> 84522 delivering 1Gcnjb-000P81-IZ: waiting for a remote delivery
>>> subprocess to finish
>>> failed: Interrupted system call
>>
>>> I can't find much info about what Interrupted system call means.
>>> thanks.
>>> exim 4.53
A workhorse, but the upgrades DID fix some bugs and near-bugs as well as add
features. 4.63 was a 100% drop-in for us. portupgraded in-place on several
running systems, (light traffic time-of-day) then a restart.
No hassle, and no significant downtime. Configure changed very much later to
utilize new feature. Painless.
>>> freebsd 5.5
Upgrade also recommended. *Wish* it were easy...
>>> clamav .88.5
>>> spamassassin 3.1.6
>> Is your spamassassin work properly?
>
>
> yes, no issues that i've seen.. It's handling about 100k messages a week.
> Besides, this is on remote delivery, not local.
>
>
>
Found one similar log entry in past 13+ months, a balked delivery to a return
address that was part of a demo of what is *bound* to break.
Related to an off-line 'chat' about why all sysadmins really should block (ich)
/ should not block (he) - traffic from personal computer MTA's with no fixed
address who munge their upstream's dsl-id into HELO-data to try and pass a HELO
lookup check.
Unproductive discussion, but reason for the obfuscation - sorry...
We logged:
===============================================================================
2006-10-15 08:37:25 1GZ1TC-000KYa-Vy ==
<user@???> R=dnslookup T=remote_smtp defer
(-53): retry time not reached for any host
..ended up frozen, manually Mrm 'ed, as we were 'tailing' the log before the
hour was out, AND had expected a failure.
2006-10-15 09:26:41 1GZ1TC-000KYa-Vy removed by root
2006-10-15 09:26:41 1GZ1TC-000KYa-Vy Completed
When repeated just now, a simple 'defer' and eventual freeze was the result.
No 'Interrupted system call' at any point, let alone twice.
OTOH, far-end user was known to be changing his environment.... often.
================================================================================
Checked 3 other Exim MTA. A FreeBS 6.2PR 'twin' of the above, plus two running
FreeBSD 4.11 with Exim 4.43 and 4.53.
No other 'system call' entries for about 3 years.
Suggest looking at the time-frame around the original message posted to see if
it was something related to how the far-end handled the handshake and/or the
underlying IP connection. Dropping it, for example.
