I have looked at the full mail headers of some of this mail and from
this it is apparent that the mail is being delivered to my local machine
almost immediately, but it is being held in /var/spool/mqueue (for
delivery at a later time). So the questions now are:
1. Why does this happen? Is it a function of system load, message size
or both (the pri=number is simply size+3000)?
2. What do I have to change (in sendmail.cf?) to change this behavior?
3. How can I get messages in /var/spool/mqueue to be delivered
immediately (restarting sendmail doesn't do it)?
Thanks,
Peter
Original message:
> Dear Experts:
>
> I have the following problem which isn't strictly a Tru64 Unix
> problem. A certain user is sending mail from an outside account
> to her local account. Mail without attachments arrives immediately
> while mail sent with an attached file (even a small text file) is
> delayed by several hours. For example (from /var/adm/syslog.dated/x/mail.log):
>
> Jul 8 07:48:57 chemphys sendmail[5732]: HAA05732: from=<dvora_at_post.tau.ac.il>,
> size=1092637, class=0, pri=1122637, nrcpts=1, msgid=<Pine.SGI.4.33_heb2.09.03070
> 80748330.962136-103000_at_ccsg.tau.ac.il>, proto=ESMTP, relay=doar2.weizmann.ac.il
> [132.77.22.87]
>
>
> Jul 8 17:39:11 chemphys sendmail[26938]: HAA05732: to=<dvora_at_[132.77.58.13]>, d
> elay=09:50:14, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, stat=Sent
>
> and this is just one example of about a dozen instances. My question
> is, where is this mail being held up? Is it at the sending mailer, at
> our institute mail server (which all outside mail passes through) or on
> my local machine (chemphys)? If locally, where can I find it and what
> can I do to prevent this? I am aware of the fact that a particular
> mailer may have some policy about deferring mail delivery of mail over a
> certain size, etc., but how can I find out which one it might be? Does
> the fact that my mail.log gets notification of the mail, but the mail
> isn't delivered to the user's inbox for several hours indicate that the
> mail has been delivered to chemphys and is being held up locally? If
> so, how can I change this?
>
> Here's an example of mail WITHOUT an attached file (no delay):
>
> Jul 8 08:07:05 chemphys sendmail[5513]: IAA05513: from=<dvora_at_post.tau.ac.il>,
> size=3075, class=0, pri=33075, nrcpts=1, msgid=<Pine.SGI.4.33_heb2.09.0307080805
> 390.960380-100000_at_ccsg.tau.ac.il>, proto=ESMTP, relay=doar2.weizmann.ac.il [132.
> 77.22.87]
> Jul 8 08:07:09 chemphys sendmail[6548]: IAA05513: to=<dvora_at_[132.77.58.13]>, de
> lay=00:00:04, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=local, stat=Sent
>
>
> We are running v4.0f pl7 and sendmail v8.9.3.
>
> TIA,
> Peter
>
> Peter Stern
> Chemical Physics Department
> Weizmann Institute of Science
> 76100 Rehovot, ISRAEL
>
> email: Peter.Stern_at_weizmann.ac.il
> phone: 972-8-9342096
> fax: 972-8-9344123
>
>
Received on Wed Jul 09 2003 - 08:40:07 NZST