topic Re: initrtab behavuour in Operating System - Linux

initrtab behavuour

Dan Am — Fri, 05 Apr 2002 08:25:08 GMT

This actually concerns a linux system, but I get a faster anwer her :-)
I thought I'
s get bright , and insert the sendmail daemon into inittab with:
mail:35:respawn:/usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -q30m -om
which is ok; only the way it works is funny:
1. I kill the daemon.
2) Nothing happens for ca. 3 mins
3) sendmail comes up in 8 instances
4) the surplus instances die after ca 3 mins.

How come ?
Anybody know where to to tune this ?

Regards
Dan

Re: initrtab behavuour

Dan Am — Fri, 05 Apr 2002 08:26:34 GMT

ps.: Sorry for the typos.

Re: initrtab behavuour

Kodjo Agbenu — Sat, 06 Apr 2002 20:02:59 GMT

Hello Dan,

The "-bd" option tells sendmail to run in daemon mode.
Using inittab with "respawn" directive, you tell the "init" process to restart the sendmail daemon when it dies. In my opinion, it is not a good idea to mix both mechanisms.

If you look at "xdm" (or prefdm) in /etc/inittab, a "nodaemon" option is explicitly specified.

For sendmail in inittab, I would suggest "-bD" (capital D):

mail:35:respawn:/usr/sbin/sendmail -bD -q30m -om

The "-bd" (small d) should be used only when sendmail is started from command-line or rc scripts.

Good luck.

Kodjo

Re: initrtab behavuour

Dan Am — Tue, 09 Apr 2002 22:13:13 GMT

To my own surprise, "-bD" did not change a thing,hmmm...
I think the problem is with sendmail going into daemon mode, it becommes a different process, and thus the original calling process is dead. There may some issues in handling this, I figure.

Re: initrtab behavuour

U.SivaKumar_2 — Fri, 19 Apr 2002 08:58:44 GMT

hi,
try using "once" instead of "respawn".

regards,
U.SivaKumar.