/var/spool/squeue gets full frequently

UNIX AIX
1

hi, im new in aix administration.. months ago, I received mails, everytime a cron was executed. but now, I don't receive these mails.. and the /var/spool/squeue, gets full frequently. i'd like to know more information about this, what can i do?? sendmail is up, because, I executed ps -ef |grep sendmail and it returned =

# ps -ef | grep sendmail
root 225400 188542 0 Oct 24 - 2:31 sendmail: accepting connections

I have AIX 5.3

and in /etc/mail i have these files =

# pwd
/etc/mail
# ls
aliases aliases.db sendmail.cf sendmail.pid

2

Hi,

You could try and flush the sendmail queue, to do this you could try the command

sendmail -v -q

You might also want to try restarting the sendmail process.

Also worth checking that the configuration files have not been changed unexpectedly.

Regards

Dave

3

thanks,

well, I checked out the files, and i dont think so, because the date of last modify for those files, are very old..

unless, there are other ways to get this information (if those files have been modified?)

I'm gonna try to flush the sendmail queue, but i will try this on this weekend, hopefully this works..

-rw------- 1 root system 35 Oct 24 11:27 sendmail.pid
-rw------- 1 root system 47384 Dec 14 2007 sendmail.cf
-rw-r----- 1 root system 12288 Dec 13 2007 aliases.db
-rw------- 1 root system 1320 Dec 13 2007 aliases

I got another doubt, perhaps, you can help me also, i have the "guest" user unlocked, i'm starting in this job, so i'm not sure if this is ok, should i lock this user?

4

Hi,

Did the sendmail command flush the mail que?

As a guide I would say that if you don't require a user then the user should be locked or of possible removed.

Regards

Dave

5

A cron job always sends a mail to the owner of the respective cron queue when it produces output which would go to the screen. Since there is no terminal attached to a cron job the only way for it to put that output somewhere is to mail it to the originator.

I would check the cron jobs of all users (you can find the crontabs of all users in "/var/spool/cron/crontabs/<username>") and add complete output suppression to those which haven't one already. If a cron job has to produce some output it should go to logfiles:

# wrong:
* * * * * /path/to/cronjob
# correct:
* * * * * /path/to/cronjob 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
# correct too:
* * * * * /path/to/cronjob 1>/path/to/logfile 2>/path/to/error-logfile

I hope this helps.

bakunin

6

Hi, I tried the command but it gave me an error i think... can you helpme to findout what is this about please?

thankyou!

# sendmail -v -q

Warning: .cf file is out of date: sendmail AIX5.3/8.13.4 supports version 10, .c
f file is version 9
WARNING: local host name (BAANPRO) is not qualified; see cf/README: WHO AM I?
Running /var/spool/mqueue/o3CBj3np1138768 (sequence 1 of 2)
hash map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/mail/aliases.db: World writable director
y
dbm map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/mail/aliases: No such file or directory
root... WARNING: cannot open alias database /etc/mail/aliases; reading text vers
ion
Running /var/spool/mqueue/o3CBr1JP925722 (sequence 2 of 2)