Subject: bin/165: sendmail could lose mail on hung nameserver.
To: None <gnats-admin>
From: None <sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 03/09/1994 21:50:03
>Number: 165
>Category: bin
>Synopsis: sendmail could lose mail on hung nameserver.
>Confidential: no
>Severity: serious
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: gnats-admin (Utility Bug People)
>State: open
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: net
>Arrival-Date: Wed Mar 9 21:50:02 1994
>Originator: Bill Sommerfeld
>Organization:
>Release:
>Environment:
seen in sendmail 8.6.4; probably in 8.6.5, too..
System: NetBSD orchard.medford.ma.us 0.9a ORCHARD#3 i386
>Description:
sendmail apparantly doesn't finish writing the queue file
(thus committing the message into the queue) until
after it resolves the names of the recipients.
if named is hung, this could take a while (several minutes);
in the interim, the system could crash (or be shut down) and
the message is effectively lost..
>How-To-Repeat:
unplug your system from the net
kill & restart named (to clear the cache).
mail -v someuser@some.other.host << EOF
foo
bar
EOF
# note that it sits there for a while
^Z
mailq
# note that the message shows up as "no queue file".
>Fix:
Unknown at present time; probably should queue up message
before attempting to do any action which could trigger a
name resolution call.
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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