[Mimedefang] mimedefang fails to start upon reboot

[jef moskot]

On Sat, 7 Nov 2009, jef moskot wrote:
> The problem leaves this evidence in /var/log/maillog
>
> Nov  7 23:45:30 phantom mimedefang-multiplexor[936]: Starting slave 1 (pid  1238) (1 running): Bringing slaves up to minSlaves (2)
> Nov  7 23:45:30 phantom mimedefang-multiplexor[936]: Slave 1 stderr: Out of memory during request for 4088 bytes, total sbrk() is 9553920 bytes!
> Nov  7 23:45:30 phantom mimedefang-multiplexor[936]: Slave 1 stderr: Out of memory during request for 48 bytes, total sbrk() is 9553920 bytes!
> Nov  7 23:45:30 phantom mimedefang-multiplexor[936]: Reap: slave 1 (pid 1238) exited due to signal 11 (SLAVE DIED UNEXPECTEDLY)
> Nov  7 23:45:30 phantom mimedefang-multiplexor[936]: Slave 1 resource usage: req=0, scans=0, user=0.092, sys=0.056, nswap=0, majflt=0, minflt=3101, maxrss=13432, bi=5, bo=18

OK, this is might be blindingly obvious to you all (or a curiosity of 
FreeBSD, I dunno), but I've just discovered the world of rcorder with its 
mysterious PROVIDE/REQUIRE/BEFORE/KEYWORD magic.

The default setup for mimedefang.sh in /usr/local/etc/rc.d is

# PROVIDE: mimedefang
# REQUIRE: LOGIN
# BEFORE: mail
# KEYWORD: shutdown

PROVIDE and KEYWORD seem to be no-brainers, but what would the error above 
indicate mimedefang wants that it doesn't yet have?

Maybe not all the CPUs are fired up yet?  Or it doesn't have swap space?

Is mimedefang unhappy if the sendmail daemon is not yet running when it 
tries to start?

To recap, upon reboot, mimedefang continually pukes out error messages 
like the ones listed above until the process is manually stopped and 
restarted.  After that, it works just fine.

Sorry if I'm dipping into the realm of port creation, but the maintainer 
for the FreeBSD port takes ages to respond, and if this is potentially 
something simple, I thought I'd ask you guys first (and then pass on 
whatever we learn to the maintainer).

Thanks.

Jeffrey Moskot
System Administrator
jef at math.miami.edu