Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: Problem: mail spool area and .forward on different machines Message-ID: <1990Nov7.182736.31025@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 7 Nov 90 18:27:36 GMT References: <1990Nov1.102200@ap.co.umist.ac.uk> <2549@ztivax.UUCP> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 33 In article <2549@ztivax.UUCP> lbo@ztivax.UUCP (Lothar Borrmann) writes: >In article michael@uni-paderborn.de (Michael Schmidt) writes: >> >>We have ONE mail directory mounted on all machines, we are using. We >>do local delivery to make "mail user" work (although we encourage to >>use the full domain address). ... >> >>You have to ensure, that all mailers involved respect the same lock. >>... >Don't you run into trouble when a local mailer wants to do >"local delivery" to the central mail directory via the network, >and the net (or the node holding the mail directory) is >temporarily down? >I mean, the usual thing to do would be to hold the message in >the sendmail queue but standard binmail (the usual local >delivery agent) was not programmed to behave that way. So >in this case the mail delivery would fail and the message would >be returned to the sender, wouldn't it ? You might have to test it to see what happens. There are some causes of failure for which binmail returns a status to sendmail such that the message is queued for future delivery. If, for example, the local sender has set a ulimit which is too small for the recipient's current mailbox size, the final delivery by binmail fails but, at least on my system, the mail is requeued. Next time the queue is run it works, because sendmail then is a child of the root daemon, and has not executed the sender's '.login' which set the ulimit. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115. +1-815-753-6940