> I smell a corrupted DBM file. Can you run exim_tidydb by hand (it
> won't hurt) at an appropriate moment and wait to see which db file it
> opens when the memory usage goes bananas?
work0.psg.com:/var/spool/exim/db# exim_tidydb /var/spool/exim retry
Tidying Exim hints database /var/spool/exim/db/retry
failed to malloc 8200 bytes of memory: called from line 167 of store.c
work0.psg.com:/var/spool/exim/db# ls -l
total 128
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 65536 Apr 27 21:46 retry
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 0 May 25 2003 retry.lockfile
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 65536 Apr 27 21:55 wait-remote_smtp
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 0 May 25 2003 wait-remote_smtp.lockfile
work0.psg.com:/var/spool/exim/db# rm *
wait a while
work0.psg.com:/var/spool/exim/db# ls -l
total 35
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 16384 Apr 27 22:20 retry
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 0 Apr 27 22:10 retry.lockfile
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 16384 Apr 27 22:25 wait-remote_smtp
-rw-r----- 1 mailnull mail 0 Apr 27 22:10 wait-remote_smtp.lockfile
work0.psg.com:/var/spool/exim/db# exim_tidydb /var/spool/exim retry
Tidying Exim hints database /var/spool/exim/db/retry
top shows
PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
38730 root 1 62 0 7772M 3432M pfault 1 0:25 16.26% exim_tidydb
system locks up and requires remote power bar
this is happening on more than one system
randy