[BlueOnyx:24188] sendmail dying on 5209R - not restartable except by reboot

[Christoph Schneeberger]

Hi,

I wonder if anybody else has seen this. On quite a few 5209R (and 5210R 
IIRC, though below case was 5209R) we had sendmail die completely 
recently and when we try to restart it with "service sendmail restart" 
we get "Failed to get D-Bus connection: Connection refused".

The only cure for the problem I found so far would then be a reboot.

Before the last occurence of this problem I see this in the logs 
repeatedly (about 50 times within 2-3s):

Aug 17 16:42:28 vps-128-114 sendmail[31980]: alias database 
/etc/mail/aliases rebuilt by root
Aug 17 16:42:28 vps-X-Y sendmail[31980]: /etc/mail/aliases: 77 aliases, 
longest 10 bytes, 788 bytes total
Aug 17 16:42:28 vps-X-Y sendmail[31980]: alias database 
/etc/mail/aliases.mailman rebuilt by root
Aug 17 16:42:28 vps-X-Y sendmail[31980]: /etc/mail/aliases.mailman: 10 
aliases, longest 52 bytes, 612 bytes total
Aug 17 16:42:29 vps-X-Y sendmail[31986]: alias database 
/etc/mail/aliases rebuilt by root
Aug 17 16:42:29 vps-X-Y sendmail[31986]: /etc/mail/aliases: 77 aliases, 
longest 10 bytes, 788 bytes total
Aug 17 16:42:29 vps-X-Y sendmail[31986]: alias database 
/etc/mail/aliases.mailman rebuilt by root
Aug 17 16:42:29 vps-X-Y sendmail[31986]: /etc/mail/aliases.mailman: 10 
aliases, longest 52 bytes, 612 bytes total
Aug 17 16:42:29 vps-X-Y sendmail[31989]: alias database 
/etc/mail/aliases rebuilt by root
...

I have a hard time accepting that a reboot is the only fix for a stopped 
sendmail that shouldn't stop in the first place.

Thanks for any helpful hints in advance,
Christoph