[Mimedefang] HUGE problem with mimedefang

[David F. Skoll]

Lisa Casey wrote:

> Apr 21 00:52:35 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[24688]: j3L4nfGx024688: Milter
> (mimedefang): error connecting to filter: Connection refused by
> /var/spool/MIMEDefang/mimedefang.sock

> Does anyone have ANY idea what might have caused this to happen?

The milter may have died.  There are many reasons why this could have
happened, from lack of memory to a misfeature in libmilter that calls
exit() if certain system calls fail too many times in a row.

If you work for an ISP, you probably should have a monitoring script
in place that watches for this kind of thing and restarts
Sendmail/MIMEDefang, or at least alerts someone.

Here's a shell script you might want to run every 5 minutes from cron.
Modify it for your local setup as appropriate.

Regards,

David.

#!/bin/sh
/etc/init.d/mimedefang status > /dev/null 2>&1
if test $? != 0 ; then
    /etc/init.d/mimedefang stop > /dev/null 2>&1
    sleep 2
    echo "MIMEDefang appears to have stopped; restarting..."
    /etc/init.d/mimedefang start > /dev/null 2>&1
fi