Re: [exim] Exim delivery spiraling out of control

On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 5:30 AM, Russell King <rmk+exim@???> wrote:
>>> I've disabled the queue runner, the exim daemon is currently in
>>> queue-only mode (no -q argument).
>> Um, you really want to run totally manually?
> I don't _want_ to but at the moment I have no choice to stop exim
> sprialing out of control. If I allow it to run the queue, it will
> do it in what seems to be a completely uncontrolled manner.

I believe you are getting the appearance of it being uncontrolled
because what is supposed to be short lived processes are not
terminating.

>> Meantime, what settings do you have on the
>> smtp transport in use for these deliveries,
>> for max_rcpt and serialize_hosts
> max_rcpt is not set, because I want exim to deliver all message recipients
> in one SMTP transaction. Also, serialize_hosts was unset. I just tried
> setting it to *, and it still started running away.

Delete your hints files (/var/spool/exim/db/ by default, but it
depends where you distro puts it if you don't build it from source);
see if that makes a difference.

In the exim manual regarding serialize_hosts:
"If you set up this kind of serialization, you should also arrange to
delete the relevant hints database whenever your system reboots. The
names of the files start with misc and they are kept in the spool/db
directory. There may be one or two files, depending on the type of DBM
in use."

It doesn't seem logical to me that you should have to clear the hints
db, but it must store the info in the database differently if
serialize_hosts is on? I haven't looked at the code, so I'm only
guessing.

>> Also, how many processes is "a great number" ?
> Even with the limits I've given, I see in excess of 20 exim -MC processes
> one exim -M <message-id> where the message-id following -MC is different.
> I don't recall the other parameters.

Can you show us the output of exiwhat? That may give us a better idea
of what's going on. If you prefer to do this offlist, that's fine,
but my availability is limited because work is really busy right now
(and work pays the bills).

...Todd
--
The total budget at all receivers for solving senders' problems is $0.
If you want them to accept your mail and manage it the way you want,
send it the way the spec says to. --John Levine