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Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:12328 comp.unix.solaris:4980 Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.solaris Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!newsserver.jvnc.net!conicit.ve!usb.ve!shaddam!poc From: poc@shaddam.usb.ve (Patrick O'Callaghan) Subject: Re: SunOS 4.1 sendmail hangs on certain messages In-Reply-To: muts@compi.hobby.nl's message of Fri, 23 Jul 1993 09:32:34 GMT Message-ID: <POC.93Jul27151419@shaddam.usb.ve> Sender: usenet@usb.ve (Usenet pseudo-user) Organization: Universidad Simon Bolivar References: <MUTS.93Jul23103234@compi.hobby.nl> Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 19:14:19 GMT Lines: 25 In article <MUTS.93Jul23103234@compi.hobby.nl> muts@compi.hobby.nl (Peter Mutsaers) writes: on our email server often several sendmail processes are running for a long time, using CPU. I have to kill them then. It seems that some addresses in the mail queue trigger this, but I couldn't find out which exatcly. You may have hit the infamous "no terminating '.'" bug/feature. Some sendmails, including Sun's, enforce strictly the RFC822 requirement that the message end with a dot on a line by itself. If a user edits with, say, Emacs, his message does not necessarily end in a newline, thus triggering the "bug". The receiving sendmail just sits there waiting for the message to finish. It will eventually time out with an error message. Solutions: use IDA-sendmail, or tell your users to be careful (Emacs users can set a local variable to force a newline on the end of text buffers). -- Patrick O'Callaghan Internet: poc@usb.ve Departamento de Computacion NICNAME: PO22 Universidad Simon Bolivar Tel: +058 (2) 906 3320, 906 3947 Apartado de Correos 89000 FAX: +058 (2) 93 71 28 Caracas, Venezuela "There is no Net but the Internet"