heads-up! errors on busy Postfix/FC3 mail servers, check your server

Florin Andrei florin at andrei.myip.org
Mon May 2 21:45:07 UTC 2005


If you're running an FC3 mail server with Postfix that's quite busy,
please check your mail logs. Some Postfix daemons may crash and then get
restarted, but the whole thing is not evident unless you dig through the
logs:

grep panic /var/log/maillog*

You may see errors such as:

Apr 18 12:19:14 XXXXgate postfix/smtp[30810]: panic: myfree: corrupt or
unallocated memory block
Apr 18 12:19:15 XXXXgate postfix/qmgr[29035]: warning: transport smtp
failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the
problem description
Apr 18 12:21:17 XXXXgate postfix/qmgr[29035]: warning: transport smtp
failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the
problem description
Apr 18 12:24:31 XXXXgate postfix/qmgr[29035]: warning: transport smtp
failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the
problem description

Apr 18 14:21:07 XXXXgate postfix/smtp[2232]: panic: deliver_completed:
bad offset 0
Apr 18 14:21:08 XXXXgate postfix/qmgr[29035]: warning: transport smtp
failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the
problem description

postfix/smtp[1942]: panic: vstream_buf_alloc: unable to extend
fixed-size buffer

postfix/master[2915]: warning: process /usr/libexec/postfix/qmgr pid
16054 exit status 1

The result is a performance decrease of mail delivery.

I thought I was the only one seeing this problem and, after discussing
it on postfix-users, everyone (me included) thought it was a hardware
issue.
But today someone else emailed me saying that he's having the same
problem with a busy FC3/Postfix mail server.

The problem does not seem to appear unless the machine is really busy,
but please check your servers anyway.

Judging from the discussion on postfix-users, it's specific to Fedora,
perhaps only to FC3, perhaps only to FC3 with all updates (including the
kernel), so maybe it's not a problem with Postfix per se but with
something else (kernel? exec-shield? compiler? libraries?).

I cannot test it anymore, not too soon anyway.

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/




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