[linux-help] Re: Very slow sendmail startup

[Carl D Cravens <raven@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 15 May 2005, bbales wrote:

> I tried to make some sense out of the newaliases line, but it seems to be a
> 732K C program (starts with "ELF").

newaliases should be a link to sendmail.  All it does is compile your 
aliases file to the database format.  No reason to call that every time 
you boot up if you make sure you rebuild the aliases database whenever 
the aliases file (usually /etc/aliases) changes.

> Even six minutes for a laptop to boot up is too much.  Does anyone have 
> any ideas?

Delays here could be caused by slow DNS lookups... I believe sendmail 
defaults to looking at the IP address of the primary network interface, 
then doing a reverse-DNS lookup to find all the domains that sendmail 
might have to handle mail for.  It may do other DNS lookups at startup as 
well.

If there is some kind of delay in the DNS lookup, the timeouts in 
sendmail are rather lengthy, with each retry getting longer and longer 
before it gives up.  So make sure your DNS is working properly.

-- 
Carl D Cravens (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
The thoughtless are rarely wordless.
    -Howard W. Newton

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