4.2 sendmail trouble

Chris Torek chris at umcp-cs.UUCP
Wed Jan 23 14:08:27 AEST 1985


This is (what else) a sendmail bug.  It doesn't check for EOF very
carefully.  If it gets a line that's not terminated by a CRLF (probably
actually just a CR or just an LF will do) just before the EOF, it
goes nuts and fills your file systems with thousands of copies of the
last input line plus whatever else happens to be left in a buffer.

At least, this is what I've heard, and it sounds like it might do it.

The reason you get fifteen or twenty sendmails driving the load way
up is that the remote site (which dropped its SMTP connection, which
is why you got the EOF) has retried the funky mail item fifteen or
twenty times.
-- 
(This line accidently left nonblank.)

In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7690)
UUCP:	{seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at maryland



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