Re: [exim] Failed to read delivery status

Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Phil Pennock
Date:  
To: Chris Zimmerman
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] Failed to read delivery status
On 2008-09-24 at 17:13 -0400, Chris Zimmerman wrote:
> I keep having issues with certain domains for only an hour or so at a time.
> I see several messages in my panic_log that say this.
>
> 2008-09-21 07:21:33 1KhN0J-0005fh-1X failed to read delivery status for
> user@??? from delivery subprocess
> 2008-09-21 07:21:33 1KhN0J-0005fh-1X appendfile transport process returned
> non-zero status 0x000e: terminated by signal 14


Signal numbers are mostly OS-dependent, but 14 is fairly widespread as
SIGALRM (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris checked). Which OS are you running?

What version of Exim are you running? Are you running something older
than 4.33? If you are, then you have various problems which should
encourage you to upgrade anyway (eg, security problems in bundled PCRE
libraries).

If you're running something in the 4.24 to 4.32 range, then this item
from the ChangeLog is certainly relevant:

----------------------------8< cut here >8------------------------------
Exim version 4.33
-----------------

 1. Change 4.24/6 introduced a bug because the SIGALRM handler was disabled
    before starting a queue runner without re-exec. This happened only when
    deliver_drop_privilege was set or when the Exim user was set to root. The
    effect of the bug was that timeouts during subsequent deliveries caused
    crashes instead of being properly handled. The handler is now left at its
    default (and expected) setting.
----------------------------8< cut here >8------------------------------


We're now up to Exim 4.69 and I encourage you to upgrade to that.
Generally, regressions in Exim are very rare and, being software an
Internet-facing service, security problems do occasionally show up.
It's a good idea to have a plan in place for how to go about qualifying
and upgrading to the latest version when it comes out (provided that the
major number, before the dot, is the same).

-Phil