[Mimedefang] Mimedefang errors: What might be the cause?

[Lisa Casey]

Hi,

I'm running Mimedefang/Spamassassin on a Redhat server with Sendmail. This
has all been running fine for a couple of years now. Suddenly, this morning
my customers were unable to send  e-mail. Looking at /var/log/maillog, I saw
lots of entries such as this:

Jan 14 02:22:18 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang-multiplexor[1014]: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:18 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang-multiplexor[1014]: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:18 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10206]: Error from multiplexor:
error: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:18 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[10201]: k0E7MB2d010201: Please try
again later
Jan 14 02:22:18 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10100]: Error from multiplexor:
error: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:18 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[10098]: k0E7Lw2c010098: Please try
again later

Jan 14 02:22:27 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10243]: mfconnect: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:27 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10246]: mfconnect: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:27 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10247]: mfconnect: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:27 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10248]: mfconnect: No free slaves
Jan 14 02:22:27 Raydeus-Dee mimedefang[10249]: mfconnect: No free slaves

I stopped and restarted Sendmail/Mimedefang but that did not help. Finally I
just rebooted the Redhat box. Interestingly enough, when it came back up the
problem was still there but a few minutes later it rresolved.

I need to try to determine what might cause this and how to prevent it from
happening again.

Also - how do I find out how many slaves Mimedefang is configured to have
and should I increase that? If so, how?

Thanks,

Lisa Casey