Bug#297607: Long pause when exim daemon is being stopped (was: Re: exim4 prone to break d-i, bug #297607)

[Frans Pop]

On Saturday 26 March 2005 06:47, Marc Haber wrote:
> > The only thing I did notice is that, if I run 'dpkg-reconfigure
> > exim4-config' _after_ the installation is completed, "restarting MTA"
> > takes a very long time (something like 30 seconds), but only the
> > first time I do it.
>
> That sounds like a DNS issue. Exim tries to resolve its own hostname,
> and if that cannot be done, it waits for a DNS timeout. Usual remedy
> is making sure that the local hostname (hostname _and_ FQDN) is
> resolvable via /etc/hosts, since for a new install the hostname is
> unlikely to be available via DNS. See the second FAQ question in
> README.Debian

No, that's not it. Both systems are known on my DNS server. It could still 
well be a DNS issue, but nothing that easy.

> > During recent normal installations from Sarge (on different archs),
> > I've seen a similar problem: on the first shutdown after installation
> > it takes a very long time to "stop MTA".
>
> That's a new one. Can you try setting EX4DEBUG to a non-empty value
> and see where the delay is happening?

I've reproduced it just now during an installation using the sparc64 RC3 
netinst CD. The pause during power off is at the "start-stop-daemon 
--stop" command.
The pause is about the same as when exim is being restarted during 
reconfiguration in the first situation.

During previous installations with "local mail only", the default for the 
hostname would mostly be the system name. Now I see 
"localhost.localdomain" in some (all?) installations. Could that be the 
root cause for both these issues?

This could be something from the d-i installation.
On this new Sparc installation I get in /etc/hosts (DHCP with fixed 
address):
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost       gimli

On another installation I have:
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
10.19.66.2      elrond.fjphome.nl       elrond

So on the new install the FQN is missing in /etc/hosts, but it is also 
readily supplied by my DNS server:
fjp@gimli:~$ ping gimli.fjphome.nl
PING gimli.fjphome.nl (10.19.66.9) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from gimli.fjphome.nl (10.19.66.9): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.273 
ms
64 bytes from gimli.fjphome.nl (10.19.66.9): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.083 
ms

Would you like me to file a separate BR for this or will you clone this 
one?

Cheers,
FJP