sendmail doesn't respond on heavy disk activity

[Marc Lucke]

Alexander Dalloz wrote:

>Am Mi, den 16.06.2004 schrieb Marc Lucke um 15:38:
>
>  
>
>>If I use dvdauthor and then telnet to port 25, the port opens but the 
>>Daemon doesn't answer until dvdauthor is finished.  Since it isn't a cpu 
>>related but a disk thing, renicing doesn't help.  I think it might be a 
>>libata thing.  How can I get my system to accept email when I'm using 
>>dvdauthor or otherwise heavily utilising my drive?
>>    
>>
>
>You get no greating message by Sendmail or does it reject your attempt
>with a temporary failure message (DSN 4.5.1)?
>
>If its last, then you have a high load and you can adjust that Sendmail
>behaviour in the sendmail.mc config file. If it really happens because
>of disk activity then you have a really big problem. It would be good to
>know whether the system runs FC1 or FC2 and which hardware you use.
>
>Alexander
>
>
>  
>
Hello again Alexander :-)

I have posted several related questions and statements to the list but 
here goes:

(1)  did not have this problem in self compiled kernels > 2.4.24 under 
FC1.  My SATA drive showed as hde and no matter how much I flogged the 
drive, sendmail would always at least answer.
(2)  when doing dvdauthor, my CPU is only running 2 instances of SETI at 
nice priority 18.  I can still even surf via Squid, although it is a bit 
slower (which I would expect)
(3)  running FC2
(4)  kernel 2.6.6 was the first Fedora kernel that would even BOOT my 
machine without manually loading libata at ata_piix in the initrd
(5)  have compiled and run-up kernel 2.6.7 from http://www.kernel.org/ 
copying the fedora kernel config file & some problems I've had have 
eased somewhat over 2.6.7-pre3 (but that's a different thing).  Still 
sendmail doesn't answer.
(6)  I have a gigabyte 8ipe1000 pro2 board with the latest bios version 
as of about a month ago (F7).  My BIOS settings are all set in a very 
standard way & I have not gone near ctrl-f1 (advanced stuff).  It is the 
865PE chipset with ich5 architecture.  I am using SATA.  I have a 2.6GHz 
hyperthreading P4 and am running the smp version

I think it is a libata thing.  I don't know what they did in kernels 
past 2.4.24 but whatever it was it worked really well with my system.  I 
didn't even see a SATA section in the low-level SCSI drivers section!

I am very happy with FC2.  I can wait until the kernel catches up.  
However if there's any way I can contribute or help myself get back to 
the "good old" hde days without re-inventing the wheel I'd love to know!

Marc
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20040617/2730376e/attachment-0001.htm>