[ic] 'Unable to send mail' - ongoing issue

[Joachim Leidinger]

Ed LaFrance wrote:
> Hi Listees -
> 
> I've just started working on a new client's system, and I see they are 
> plagued with a problem that I have observed on a myriad of other 
> installations. Namely, various emails sent by Interchange occasionally 
> do not go out. The failed sends can be found in the catalog error log, 
> preceded by the string 'Unable to send mail using (sendmail or 
> similar)'. I have seen order reports, customer receipts, contact 
> messages and more email types fail in this manner, sent by both email 
> UserTags and Interchange's internal mailing routines. I've seen this on 
> Red Hat, Debian, FreeBSD, and Solaris systems - maybe more, but those 
> are the ones that come to mind. In all cases, the systems have plenty of 
> available RAM, disk space and CPU resources.
> 
> In one case I hacked the source a bit to capture some system error info 
> to the catalog error.log, and the system said the cause was a 'broken 
> pipe'. This was only on one system, so I don't know if that holds true 
> for all cases.
> 
> I'd be interested in hearing feedback from anyone who has any ideas on 
> how to diagnose or heal the source of this problem.
...

I've seen this kind of problem in a virtual server often. In most common 
case, it failed to send email or to create/write anything into the 
session file, if the real server have a heavy load or something in this 
machine is very busy. This is true for FreeBSD as a virtual server 
systems in one real machine.

I've no clue, what the cause is.

Joachim (aka jojo)

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl. Phys.-Ing. Joachim Leidinger
eBusiness & eCommerce Consulting Leidinger
E-Mail:   marketing at ebusiness-leidinger.de
Internet: http://www.ebusiness-leidinger.de