Mailing List Archive: smtp looping

In message <Pine.LNX.3.95.970216113736.10485B-100000@neptune.cdn-news.com>, "Vi
ctor Magdic (list)" writes:
} I've set up qmail smtp in my inetd.conf as per the instructions, and it's
} been working fine for the several months. But recently (past week), I'm
} getting "smtp failing (looping)" and the smtp services are terminated by
} inetd. If I send HUP to the inetd process, smtp starts up again, but fails
} again after a few minutes.
}
} Anyone have any ideas? I"m using qmail 0.96 with linux 1.2.13.

Inetd will assume that something has gone wrong if it gets more than a
threshhold number of connections per minute for a particular service; it
will then disable that service for 5 or 10 minutes, then start accepting
connections again (some versions of inetd allow you to specify the threshhold;
see your man page). It sounds like your incoming SMTP volume has reached the
point of triggering this mechanism. You'll either need to turn up the
maximum number of connections per minute, or switch to tcpserver to fire up
qmail-smtpd.

--
Jon Hamilton hamilton@pobox.com | hamilton@pitviper.med.ge.com
<A HREF="http://www.pobox.com/~hamilton">Jon Hamilton's homepage</A>