Sendmail 8.9.1a zombies & queueing

["Chris Evans" <chris1@psyctc.org>]

I see that mailq has 12 queued messages.  I think they were 
created when sendmail stopped owing to the load in the system 
going too high (that's another story!).  I now have a number of 
zombie sendmail processes that I can't kill and wondered:

a) Can zombied sendmail processes in effect "hold" queued mail?

b) How can I kill zombied sendmail processes (kill -9 created them!)

c) Can anyone think of other things that might be getting things 
stuck in the queue?  (One is a routine message from root to me 
that I can see, i.e. entirely internal; several others are listar list 
messages)

I'm running 8.9.1a on Debian hamm (yes, I am going to upgrade but 
not for a few more weeks).

I'm copying this to the list-support list in case anyone there 
recognises this, apologies for cross-posting.

TIA,


Chris

Chris Evans <chris@visped.org or chris@psyctc.org>
Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy,
Rampton Hospital; Associate R&D Director,
Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust;
Hon. SL Institute of Psychiatry
*** My views are my own and not representative 
of those institutions ***