Description of problem: Locally-originated mail doesn't get delivered. Instead it sits in /var/spool/clientmqueue. The reason is that either sendmail or sm-client has died. "service sendmail status" reports that one of these processes is "dead but pid file exists". The problem can be fixed in the short-term by running "service sendmail restart". This is happening apparently at random to me and a colleague, once every few weeks. I observe that at various times, /var/log/maillog often gets four lines like these: May 9 08:51:43 ricola sendmail[24014]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal May 9 08:51:43 ricola sm-msp-queue[24012]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal May 9 08:51:43 ricola sm-msp-queue[29970]: starting daemon (8.14.3): queueing@01:00:00 May 9 08:51:43 ricola sendmail[29972]: starting daemon (8.14.3): SMTP+queueing@01:00:00 But at about the point that sendmail dies, it gets five lines, like this: May 11 15:58:31 ricola sendmail[11106]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal May 11 15:58:31 ricola sm-msp-queue[11107]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal May 11 15:58:31 ricola sm-msp-queue[15448]: starting daemon (8.14.3): queueing@01:00:00 May 11 15:58:31 ricola sm-msp-queue[15448]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal May 11 15:58:31 ricola sm-msp-queue[15471]: starting daemon (8.14.3): queueing@01:00:00 Based on this, I have a theory that the problem might be caused by the network management system restarting sendmail twice simultaneously, and maybe sendmail has a race condition which means this will sometimes fail. I don't know if it is relevant, but if I try and simulate this by repeatedly running: service sendmail restart & service sendmail restart; sleep 4; service sendmail status ...then fairly often (30% on one machine, 10% on another), the sendmail service ends up dead. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): sendmail-8.14.3-8.fc12.i686 How reproducible: Happens randomly every few weeks (on a laptop that's used for around 12 hours a day and moved from home to work daily) Steps to Reproduce: Cannot reproduce to order. Actual results: Locally originated mail gets queued in /var/spool/clientmqueue and not delivered Expected results: Mail should be delivered. Additional info: The "mailq" program doesn't report mail which is queued in /var/spool/clientmqueue. So when this bug is happening, "mailq" reports that nothing is amiss. On the face of it, mailq should report all queued mail whereever it is.
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I am now running F14 and have not seen this problem for a while, so I am happy to let this bug go WONTFIX.
Thanks for info, if you encounter this problem again feel free to reopen across F14.
Michael, use "mailq" and "mailq -Ac" (see: http://www.novosial.org/sendmail/), that's basically how Sendmail was designed. Just noticed that report when I was looking for another one.