[Mimedefang] sendmail processes remaining after message rejected

[Michael D. Sofka]

Ben Poliakoff wrote:

> We've been completely clobbered by this as well.  It turns out the
> default sendmail timeout waiting for command is 1 hour.  I found a
> suggestion from Robert Harker on the sendmail newsgroup suggesting 1
> minute might be a more sane timeout. 
> 
>     define(`confTO_COMMAND',`1m')
> 
> This seems to have completely cleared up the 'cmd read' problem.

Setting the Timeout.command to 5 minutes greatly relieved the 
problem---for a while.  Eventually there was a blast from telesp.net.br 
and back up to nearly 300 sendmail processes.

I've since put in some of the suggested timeout values in a later
post (particularly the data timeout values), and we're back to normal. 
Maybe better.

The question remains if this was the result of new, badly behaving
spambots (Spambots Gone Wild!(tm)), or something else.  I've seen
a couple other reports of the same problem, so I lean toward a new
or resurgent spambot.

Thank you all for your help.

Mike
--
Michael D. Sofka               sofkam at rpi.edu
C&MT Sr. Systems Programmer,   Email, TeX, Epistemology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.  http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/