[BlueOnyx:06657] Re: vacation.pl oddities

[Ken - Precision Web Hosting, Inc]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roy Urick" <rurick at usa.net>
To: "'BlueOnyx General Mailing List'" <blueonyx at blueonyx.it>
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 9:44 AM
Subject: [BlueOnyx:06656] Re: vacation.pl oddities


> Thanks Ken, but that wont quite help.
>
> Quite often you cant kill the process because it gets locked up so badly.
> The only way to kill the process in that case is an "init 6". I've so far
> had to reboot our server 4x in as many hours today to fix the problem 
> after
> trying repeatedly to kill the process various ways... by PID causes it to
> spawn a new one instantly.  Killing by the user, or killall by process 
> name
> simply doesn't do a thing. Neither errors that nothing was killed, it just
> is ineffective.
>
> The only reliable way to stop it is to prevent it from running in the 
> first
> place. But I just don't want to disable it in a way that breaks something
> else. (other than maybe adding log file entries)
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blueonyx-bounces at blueonyx.it [mailto:blueonyx-bounces at blueonyx.it] 
> On
> Behalf Of Ken - Precision Web Hosting, Inc
> Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 12:20 PM
> To: BlueOnyx General Mailing List
> Subject: [BlueOnyx:06654] Re: vacation.pl oddities
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Roy Urick
> To: blueonyx at blueonyx.it
> Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 8:26 AM
> Subject: [BlueOnyx:06653] vacation.pl oddities
>
>
> This is a little bit OT, but I know a lot of you are familiar with BQ as
> well.
>
> We are currently running a BQ server, and are in the process of migrating
> away to a BlueOnyx server. We aren't quite ready to pull the trigger on 
> the
> migration due to hardware that is still in transit, but we have a major
> issue with our old box that needs desperate attention in the interim.
>
> We have a handful of users that when they activate the vacation reply, it
> starts vacation.pl and pegs out the CPU for each message inbound with no
> apparent output. Eventually the user account will have multiple instances 
> of
>
> vacation.pl running to the point the CPU is maxed at 100%, sendmail 
> crashes,
>
> the GUI locks, etc. Other users don't seem to have any problems with it 
> and
> it runs fine.
>
> I've seen google results where gurus like Gerald Waugh and others have
> somewhat reproduced the problem but cant find a solution, I've had others
> look at our box and come to the same (lack of) conclusion.
>
> Even though the user's account  who caused the last problem has been reset
> to turn off the script it continues to flare up intermittently. It appears
> that Its time to disable it for the short term so it cant possibly run.
>
> What is the best (most stable and reliable) way to disable vacation.pl so 
> it
>
> cant possibly run? Rename it so it cant be found by other scripts that 
> call
> it? Add something to the first line to make it exit immediately if it does
> get called?
>>>
>
>
> Roy
>
> I've seen that on sites / users that are over quota.
>
> You could also set up a cron to kill the vaction.pl
>
> Something like
> */2   *   *  *  *  killall -9 vacation.pl
>
> ----
> Ken M
> Precision Web Hosting, Inc.
> http://www.precisionweb.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blueonyx mailing list
> Blueonyx at blueonyx.it
> http://www.blueonyx.it/mailman/listinfo/blueonyx
>
>
> ....


Roy,

Is it the vacation.pl from the  /admin  or the one that you can set up from 
the  /openwebmail  ?

You could deactivate the one that is not working by editing the
.forward file in each users directory.

You can check for vacation.pl in the  .forward file using
grep vacation /home/sites/*.*/users/*/.forward

Then edit those .forwward files.

----
Ken M
Precision Web Hosting, Inc.
http://www.precisionweb.net