[Pkg-exim4-users] Spool file is locked (another process is handling this message)

[Sven Hartge]

Um 08:34 Uhr am 11.02.06 schrieb Gary Dale:

> Interesting. I guess the system found some entropy overnight because this
> morning I found a flood of pent-up messages in my in-box. Some of them were
> more than 24 hours old. I guess the good news is that I do have my system
> configured properly.
 
> However, the delay is unacceptable. I found an entropy-generator on the Debian
> Wiki (http://wiki.debian.org/PkgExim4KnownBugsInSarge) that runs off of a
> maildir, but my server isn't used for mail and it doesn't get a lot of file
> activity either.

You can change the script to use files from "/" rather than from 
"/var/mail".

But: I found this script to never regenerate enough entropy, so I 
recompiled all my exims with OpenSSL (use the source from backports.org) 
so exim does not block, when the entropy pool is empty.
 
BTW: I am cursing at the kernel developers at a daily basis for making 
such a drastic change to the entropy gathering system without any further 
notice. For example the big mailserver at my university hat *no* entropy 
sources with 2.6.15, since the network interrupts don't generate any 
entropy any more and the GDTH-RAID controller also does not contribute to 
the pool.

The only solution here was to patch the kernel and to put SA_SAMPLE_RANDOM 
into the network cards and the gdth driver. (Or buy a hardware RNG; which 
sell at about 300EUR.)

All in all, the situation is pretty bad with any kernel newer than 2.6.11.

Grüße,
Sven.

-- 
Sven Hartge -- professioneller Unix-Geek
Meine Gedanken im Netz: http://www.svenhartge.de/

Achtung, neue Mail-Adresse: sven at svenhartge.de