Re: unusal fetchmail error

[Jason Quigley <jasonq@usa.net>]

I get similar problems with fetchmail. It times out while waiting for a server response. Even if the timeout parameter is supplied it does the same. IIRC, this is listed on the bugs page for fetchmail.

I threw together a couple of scripts to fix the problem.


This goes in my /etc/cron.d directory:

# /etc/cron.d/fetchmail_check: crontab fragment to check for fetchmail timeout hang.

# Check if fetchmail is hanging - every 15 minutes
0,15,30,45 * * * * root if [ ! "`tail -1 /var/log/fetchmail | grep timeout`" = "" ]; then /etc/init.d/fetchmail restart; fi





This goes in my /etc/init.d directory and is linked using /usr/sbin/update-rc.d:

#!/bin/sh
#
# /etc/init.d/fetchmail: start and stop fetchmail bg process.
#

FETCHINTERVAL=180
FETCHPROG=/usr/bin/fetchmail
FETCHMAILRC=/etc/fetchmailrc
FETCHLOG=/var/log/fetchmail

test -x $FETCHPROG || exit 1

case $1 in
start)
        echo -n "Starting fetchmail background process..."

        $FETCHPROG -v -t 120 -d $FETCHINTERVAL -f $FETCHMAILRC -L $FETCHLOG

        echo "done."
        ;;
stop)
        echo -n "Stopping fetchmail background process..."

        $FETCHPROG -q
        ;;
restart)
        /etc/init.d/fetchmail stop
        /etc/init.d/fetchmail start
        ;;
esac


I have also added the usual log rotation and cleanup stuff.

HTH,
Jason.

On Wednesday, January 24, 2001, at 01:04 PM, Kozman Balint wrote:

>  
> Hi to everyone, 
>  
> I'm running a local mailserver behind a Sonic pro firewall. Outgoing 
> messages are sent via exim to the smarthost outside with address revision. 
> I use fetchmail to get messages from the mailserver outside via pop3. 
> The problem is with fetchmail: sometimes when it gets defunct after 
> downloading messages, it becomes a Zombie, and some minutes later when the 
> new instance of fetchmail comes up, it stops working 'cos "another 
> fetchmail is running in background" and this way users don't get their 
> mails. 
> Is this a kernel problem, or a bug of fetchmail, or what? 
> (fetchmail gets started via cron) 
>  
> Thanks in advance, regards: 
>  
> Balint 
>  
>  
> --   
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