Bug#360696: exim4-daemon-heavy: Failed to get write lock for retry.lockfile / exim process hangs with 100% CPU

[Michel Meyers]

Package: exim4-daemon-heavy
Version: 4.60-4
Severity: normal

Hello,

I'm having a similar problem as the one mentioned in Bug 314356 :

I communicate a lot with people defined on an SMTP server that uses
greylisting and whenever that server rejects one of my outgoing e-mails
(meaning that exim has to retry on my side), the respective exim process
gets stuck with 100% CPU usage and the only way to get rid of it is to
kill it with signal 9. While the stuck process is there, the mainlog
keeps mentioning messages like these:
2006-04-04 09:13:33 1FQfgD-0002kv-EZ Failed to get write lock for
/var/spool/exim4/db/retry.lockfile: timed out
2006-04-04 09:13:48 1FQfhL-00035E-Ay Failed to get write lock for
/var/spool/exim4/db/retry.lockfile: timed out
2006-04-04 09:14:48 1FQfhL-00035E-Ay Failed to get write lock for
/var/spool/exim4/db/retry.lockfile: timed out

Other messages are being delivered though but the message that got
rejected by the greylisting server remains stuck until I kill said
process to have it delivered again (at which time the greylisting server
usually lets it through).

Here's an example log entry of a message getting rejected (causing the
process to go to 100% CPU):
2006-04-04 09:31:40 1FQ2wq-0005Kt-8R == removed at removed.de R=dnslookup
T=remote_smtp defer (-44): SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT
TO:<removed at removed.de>: host mail.removed.de [xx.xxx.xxx.xx]: 451 GL -
temporary problem. Please try again later.

Could this be a configuration issue on my side or is it a problem with
the code? I use greylistd,
amavis-new and spamassassin on my end and the server hosts multiple
domains (lookups done through static alias files for those).

Greetings,
       Michel


-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.60 #1 built 22-Feb-2006 10:49:24
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2005
Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.2.52: (December  3, 2003)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl GnuTLS move_frozen_messages Content_Scanning Old_Demime
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dnsdb dsearch ldap ldapdn ldapm mysql nis nis0 passwd pgsql
Authenticators: cram_md5 cyrus_sasl plaintext spa
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral iplookup manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
# /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
#
# Edit this file and /etc/mailname by hand and execute update-exim4.conf
# yourself or use 'dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config'

dc_eximconfig_configtype='internet'
dc_other_hostnames='tcnnet.com:tcnnet.dyndns.org'
dc_local_interfaces='0.0.0.0.25 : 127.0.0.1.10025'
dc_readhost=''
dc_relay_domains=''
dc_minimaldns='false'
dc_relay_nets=''
dc_smarthost=''

CFILEMODE='644'
dc_use_split_config='false'
dc_hide_mailname=''
dc_mailname_in_oh='true'
mailname:tcnnet.dyndns.org

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (650, 'testing'), (600, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages exim4-daemon-heavy depends on:
ii  exim4-base                   4.60-4      support files for all exim MTA (v4
ii  libc6                        2.3.6-3     GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libdb4.2                     4.2.52-23.1 Berkeley v4.2 Database Libraries [
ii  libgnutls12                  1.2.9-2     the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libldap2                     2.1.30-13   OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libmysqlclient15             5.0.18-9    mysql database client library
ii  libpam0g                     0.79-3.1    Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpcre3                     6.4-1.1     Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expressi
ii  libperl5.8                   5.8.8-3     Shared Perl library
ii  libpq4                       8.1.0-3     PostgreSQL C client library
ii  libsasl2                     2.1.19-1.9  Authentication abstraction library

exim4-daemon-heavy recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information