sendmail using CPU

[S.S.]

Dear All,

I want to know the following:

May i know why the sendmail is using CPU. In top the sendmail is using CPU.

CPU TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
1 ? 21899 root 158 20 458M 455M sleep 11:40 22.39 22.35 sendmail:
8 ? 22083 root 148 20 277M 273M sleep 4:58 19.39 19.36 sendmail:

I have checked
$ ps -ef|grep sendmail
root 1201 1 0 Jan 17 ? 70:39 sendmail: accepting connections on port 25
daemon 3666 21899 8 14:14:52 ? 0:00 sendmail: QAA04500: from queue
SN95599 3668 26577 0 14:14:52 pts/5 0:00 grep sendmail
root 22083 1201 219 13:37:43 ? 5:03 sendmail: HBX24033: from queue
root 21899 1201 255 13:07:38 ? 11:44 sendmail: QAA04500: from queue
root 25832 1201 192 14:07:48 ? 0:26 sendmail: DCT06491: from queue
$

May i know the reason?

Can send me the response early please.

Thanks !

[Johnson Punniyalingam]

may be your mail server , very busy

mails getting delayed in delivery of your mails

check any clues on /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

Check on --> /var/spool/mqueue

[Kapil Jha]

You have lots of mails.....flow..that is why probably.....the only this I could see from above output.

BR,
Kapil+

[Johnson Punniyalingam · Accepted solution]

# ls /var/spool/mqueue | wc --> to see how many

files are there, and look at what might be in

# /var/adm/syslog/mail.log.


Last resort I will try to stop & start sendmail

Restart sendmail

# /sbin/init.d/sendmail stop
# /sbin/init.d/sendmail start

[Horia Chirculescu]

Hello,

Take a look at:
/var/spool/mqueue

You can cat the files beginning with 'q' in order to find out from where the messages are coming and where the messages are sent.

The files beginning with 'd' contains the body of the messages.

Maybe you have a spammer in your LAN.

Horia.

[S.S.]

Hi Johnson,

I have checked the /var/spool/mqueue there are files generating from Feb 4 to till date and also the output of "$mailq -v" consists of number of jobs.

Thanks!

[Kapil Jha]

Just confirm is number of mails are reducing, if not then you will have to fix the issue.

If yes wait and watch :)

BR,
Kapil+

[Johnson Punniyalingam]

so a lot of mail is stacked up ??

if mails are important, -> no choices you need rectify what's problem so that stacked mails will be able to delivery properly,

if mails are not "important" you need remove them

best way to empty the mail queue is to run

Use "root" to perform below

# sendmail -q

This should clear it off if there is a connection issue.

If that does not work and it REALLY needs to be cleared

# rm -f /var/spool/mqueue/*

The -f supresses warning messages. (all messages are totally gone you can't recover)

[S.S.]

Thank you!

May i know why the mails are delayed?

[Horia Chirculescu]

>May i know why the mails are delayed?

Can be many reasons for this. The smtp protocol is very good in management of this kind of delays.

You can find out the previous status of each mail waiting to be sent from the q* files.

Also, you should check your mail log (check syslog in order to find out your mail log location - possible /var/adm/syslog/mail.log)

Horia.