sendmail and load avarage

[skt_skt]

#ps -ef|grep sendmail
root 15027 1 0 11:59:28 ? 0:00 sendmail: rejecting connections on port 25: load average: 23
root 15223 13349 1 12:06:31 pts/26 0:00 grep sendmail

could the load average cause the sendmail to stop listening..??

[TTr]

I 'd be worried about the load average being 23 more than about sendmail refusing connections.

The load number can be very misleading, sometimes it can shoot up because of a specific bottleneck and the server still be responsive. How responsive is the server? If the server has come to a crawl and processes are swapped out to disk I guess sendmail could refuse connections although I am not certain.

[TTr]

Does sendmail start working again when the load number drops? That would correlate the load with the sendmail behavior.

[skt_skt]

#root [/var/adm/syslog] ps -ef|grep sendmail
root 15027 1 0 11:59:28 ? 0:00 sendmail: rejecting connections on port 25: load average: 23
root 15223 13349 1 12:06:31 pts/26 0:00 grep sendmail


We tried restarting the sendmail and it completed w/o any error. But still it was giving the same error as above.

Yes it worked after the load average came done. But we had to reboot it.

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Have a look at your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file and search for 'Load'.

You will see a documentation section in the file titled "Refuse-Connections Load Average (option RefuseLA):".

To see how this is configured on your system now, search for 'RefuseLA' in the sendmail.cf file. If the line looks like:

#O RefuseLA=12

then you are probably using a built-in default value.

If the line looks like:

O RefuseLA=15

Then the load average at which sendmail will start refusing connections is 15. The value could be any number you choose.

If having sendmail refusing connections is a real problem, you probably really need to look into why the load average was so high to begin with.

[skt_skt]

closed