Re: Sendmail directories... /var/state/sendmail...
Ian,
Those directories are used to store state information about hosts your
sendmail has tried to contact. By storing the info here, sendmail can
check to see what the last state was of a host it may have recently
tried to connect. The idea is that if you have multiple queue runners
delivering mail, each runner knows if a host is already known to be
down, and won't waste its time trying to deliver there.
You are correct in that it's kind of a reverse hash, with top level
domains under /var/state/sendmail (or whatever directory you specified
with HostStatusDirectory) and that subdomains exist under there.
The bat book has more info on the guts of the files you find there, if
it's any concern to you. It also suggests that you try enabling and
disabling persistent host status to see which is best for performance on
your system.
Anyone have any comments on running that on a filesystem other than
ext2? I've noticed that a df of that directory (or even a simple "ls" of
the com subdirectory) can take a long time on ext2. Perhaps reiserfs or
something like that might be better suited for such a directory?
--Rich
Ian Perry wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have noticed some wierd directories on one of our mail servers, and so I
> checked the others. hey are on all of them in some varying degree or
> another.
>
> /var/state/sendmail....
> then ae. at. au. etc
>
(SNIP)
>
> I can see that these are in reverse order... such as acay.com.au
>
> Is this a quick DNS lookup or what purpose do they serve ?
>
> Many Thanks
>
> Ian
>
_________________________________________________________
Rich Puhek
ETN Systems Inc.
_________________________________________________________
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