The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Olivier Salaün <address@concealed>]

Defunct sendmail processes are sendmail processes that finished their 
job ; you should not worry about them.
Sympa.pl will set them free (calling &smtp::reaper() subroutine) either 
when the mail has been sent to all subscribers or if it has reached the 
'maxsmtp' threshold (defined in sympa;conf).

I suppose the situation you describe corresponds to the processing of a 
message in a BIG list. This can paralyse the service, sympa not being 
available to process commands. We've made things better in the release 
to come : sympa.pl can be configured to fork ; one process being 
dedicated to message distribution.

Rodrigo Filgueira a écrit :

> I'm running sympa 4.1.2 on RedHat 7.3 with Sendmail.
> I ping sympa four times a day asking for HELP to monitor if everything 
> is ok.
> I realized HELP messages were not being answered for the whole day and 
> decided to take a look.
> All sendmail processes triggered by sympa were reported as defunct. I 
> killed (-9) sympa
> (since it would not stop) and as soon as I start Sympa again all 
> sendmail processes triggered by sympa go to defunct status.
> I do have other sendmail processes working without a problem.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated