The Exim FAQ Section 24

# The Exim FAQ

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## 96. LINUX

Q9601: Exim is mysteriously crashing, usually when forking to send a delivery error message.

A9601: This has been seen in cases where Exim has been incorrectly built with a muddled combination of an ndbm.h include file and a non-matching DBM library.

Faults like this have also been seen on systems with faulty motherboards. You could try to compile the Linux kernel 10 times - if the compile process stops with signal 11, your hardware is to blame.

Q9602: I want to use logrotate which is standard with RH5.2 Linux to rotate my mail logs. Anyone worked out the logrotate config file that will do this?

A9602: Here's one suggestion:

       /var/log/exim/main.log {
           create 644 exim exim
           rotate 4
           compress
           delaycompress
       }

The sleep is added to allow things to close the log file prior to compression. You also need similar entries for the panic log and the reject log, of course.

Q9603: I'm seeing the message inetd[334]: imap/tcp server failing (looping), service terminated on a RedHat 5.2 system, causing imap connections to be refused. The imapd in use is Washington Univers 12.250. Could this be anything to do with Exim?

A9603: No, it's nothing to do with Exim, but here's the answer anyway: there is a maximum connection rate for inetd. If connections come in faster than that, it thinks a caller is looping. The default setting on RedHat 5.2 is 40 calls in any one minute before inetd thinks there's a problem and suspends further calls for 10 mins. This default setting is very conservative. You should probably increase it by a factor of 10 or 20. For example:

       imap stream tcp nowait.400 root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/etc/imapd

The rate setting is the number following ``nowait''. This syntax seems to be specific to the Linux version of inetd. Other operating systems provide similar functionality, but in different ways.

Q9604: I get the too many open files error especially when a lot of messages land for Majordomo at the same time.

A9604: The problem appears to be the number of open files the system can handle. This is changable by using the proc filesystem. To your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file append something like the following:

       # Now System is up, Modify kernel parameters for max open etc.

       if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/file-max ]; then
    		 echo 16384 >> /proc/sys/kernel/file-max
       fi
       if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/inode-max ]; then
    		 echo 24576 >> /proc/sys/kernel/inode-max
       fi
       if [ -f /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr ]; then
    		 echo 2160 >> /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr
       fi

By echoing the value you want for file-max to the file file-max etc., you actually change the kernel parameters.

Q9605: I installed debian 2.2 linux on a small 325mb 486 laptop. When I try to test the Mail program, I get the following error: Failed to open configuration file /etc/exim.conf.

A9605: The Debian installation should have given you /usr/sbin/eximconfig, which asks you some questions and then sets up the configuration file in /etc/exim.conf. Try running that (you'll probably need root) and see how it goes. In any case you get a thoroughly commented conf file at the end, which will give you a sample from which to work if you need further modification.

The Exim docs in the Debian package are in /usr/doc/exim where the full reference manual is spec.txt.gz.

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