Sendmail's host status cacheing (HostStatusDirectory)

[Andrew Pollock <debian-lists@andrew.net.au>]

Hi,

Is it just me and my Sendmail (the one in stable), or does it seem to 
cache rather aggressively the host status of other mail relays?

We've got an intermediate SMTP relay that relays down to clients, and a 
client's SMTP server blew up and was repaired at 2pm, and at 5pm, our 
Sendmail was still considering it to be down, purely because of what was 
in the HostStatusDirectory.

I notice that the Sendmail default is to have this switched off, however 
the Debian default is to turn it on. Would the Sendmail maintainer like to 
comment on the efficacy of this option, and indeed the rationale behind 
enabling at the default?

Andrew