The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Timothy Dunnington <address@concealed>]

I have a problem where the bulk.pl process dies unexpectedly. 

Here is the behavior I'm experiencing:

* Start the sympa services with service sympa start

* Send test messages to lists works fine

* A few days later, a user sends to the list, but nothing happens. The process appears to be running when I do a ps and check for the bulk.pid process id. But it is not functioning.

* mailq is empty

* /var/log/mail.log shows messages coming to the list, but no activity after that

* If I then bounce the sympa service, and upon startup, it will send the messages that were waiting to go to the lists, including a message to listadmin that says the bulk process died unexpectedly (I might list that as a bug; it seems like the notification message that bulk.pl died is dependent on bulk.pl).

I did find a known issue in the bug database, and implemented the suggestion (bulk_max_count 2), but this did not work.

I know the above is not enough to diagnose the problem, so what I'd like is some help in diagnosis. What is the best way to diagnose problems with bulk.pid? I find nothing of interest in syslog.

Many thanks,

Tim