Xapian discuss - Dec 2004 - Mail problems - Xapian lists out of action

The box which handles mail for lists.xapian.org isn't accepting mail.
It looks like spamassassin has wedged, holding all the allowed open SMTP
connections (and most of the memory).  Mailman doesn't seem very happy
either.  Unfortunately I don't have admin rights, so we'll need to wait
for James to return to get this fixed.  I don't know when he's back, but
he's been sent an SMS to warn him things aren't well.

I also can't easily change the DNS for lists.xapian.org to add a backup MX
(Sam: I could easily with your help, if you're around mail me).

I'm sending this message locally from the problem box, so hopefully
it'll make it out despite the problems, and at least you will all know
what's going on.  But until this is fixed, mail sent from anywhere else
will be queued at your end, and will probably bounce back after a few
days.

Cheers,
    Olly

On Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 01:24:12AM +0000, Olly Betts wrote:
> The box which handles mail for lists.xapian.org isn't accepting mail.
> It looks like spamassassin has wedged, holding all the allowed open SMTP
> connections (and most of the memory).
Yeah, it's annoying like that. It's a problem with post-v3 SA, from my
experience. We'll be moving away from SA next year some time ...
> Mailman doesn't seem very happy either.
That's because it can't cope with out of memory exceptions, and has a
tendency to get wedged. Basically, almost all mail software is doom :-(
> Unfortunately I don't have admin rights, so we'll need to wait
> for James to return to get this fixed.  I don't know when he's
back, but
> he's been sent an SMS to warn him things aren't well.
I would have fixed it when it happened, but BT Yahoo (the only
connection I had access to) doesn't do ssh. Or ping. Or, like,
internet stuff. Silly people.
> I'm sending this message locally from the problem box, so hopefully
> it'll make it out despite the problems, and at least you will all know
> what's going on.  But until this is fixed, mail sent from anywhere else
> will be queued at your end, and will probably bounce back after a few
> days.
Nothing should bounce until five days after sending, and the problems
first appeared late Friday night, so we should be fine. If anyone has
really zealously low retry times ... well, you'll get a bounce. Mail
appears to be flowing again, however ...

J

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  James Aylett                                                  xapian.org
  james@tartarus.org                               uncertaintydivision.org