[plug] Delay in sending mail

[Bill Kenworthy]

brett, from previous posts I think you are using what is now a very out
of date Linux, so I have no idea what your syslog is called, possibly
/var/log/message?  To test dns, use "nslookup" which is deprecated these
days but should be part of the standard install:

"nslookup - dns_server_ip"

and give it some addresses (and local and remote servers to use) at the
prompt to lookup and time it.  Are you running a local dns, cacheing or
sending all direct to queries to iinet?

Many programs (even some kde stuff, and I believe sendmail) do a dns
lookup on startup and hang until timeout occurs - often without an error
message.  All sorts of things can cause this from a change in firewall
config blocking lookups to bind dropping dead.  Often the symptoms can
be very deceptive if lookups are cached anywhere which many programs do
(browsers for one!)

BillK

On Wed, 2002-03-06 at 09:20, Bret Busby wrote:
> On 5 Mar 2002, William Kenworthy wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Brett, check your dns - do some trial lookups both with and without
> > opera etc.  Does syslog give any clues?
> > 
> > BillK
> > 
> > On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:42, Peter Wright wrote:
> > > 
> > > Bret,
> > > 
> > > On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:50:02PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Leon Blackwell wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 03:38:04PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> > > > > > Recently (in the last few seeks or so), sending email messages is
> > > > > > delayed, so that sending an email messages, incurs a 75 second delay.
> > > > > 
> > > > > By delayed, I assume you mean that it took 75 seconds before pine
> > > > > finished sending the mail?
> > > > 
> > > > No - the system just sits there and looks at me, for 75 seconds,
> > > > displaying "Sending mail 0%". The sending of the mail itself, takes
> > > > little time, way less than the wait for it to commence the sending.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> Unsure how to check dns, so, I viewed the file /etc/hosts. 
> 
> Seemed okay; server listed with correct name and with correct IP address.
> 
> pinged server. returned first ping 1.0ms, thereafter 0.6-0.7ms. seemed
> okay.
> 
> Not sure of syslog - not listed as filename in /var/log.
> 
> Checked /var/log/maillog. This file had only entries from January (about
> 3-4 lines), previous to suggestion from Peter Wright.
> 
> Current maillog contents:
> "Mar  5 17:53:59 bret sendmail[1193]: RAA01193: from=bret, size=49,
> class=0, pri=30049, nrcpts=1,
> msgid=<200203050952.RAA01193 at bret.busby.net>, relay=bret at localhost
> Mar  5 17:53:59 bret sendmail[1193]: RAA01193: to=bret at busby.net, 
> delay=00:01:15, mailer=esmtp, stat=queued
> "
> That shows a delay of 1 minute 15 seconds. That is the delay time that I
> previously mentioned.
> 
> I assume that when I used the command that Peter Wright suggested that I
> used and when using that command resulted in no delay before returning to
> the command line prompt and given that the delay still occurs each time
> that I send an email message using PINE and that the above shows a delay
> of 1 minute 15 seconds and that that delay is the previously mentioned
> delay of 75 seconds, using the mail command is an event that causes a mail
> message to be sent in the background and therefore any delay that occurs
> in sending a message is a delay that is not shown when control returns to
> the command line prompt.
> 
> I hope that all you people that criticise my correct use of commas which I
> so use in order to avoid unnecessarily verbose sentences such as the
> preceding sentence in which I notably use only one comma in order to
> satisfy you people, can easily read that sentence because it is now too
> long and was hard work to write and I believe that it will be hard work to
> read because of your attacks on my punctuation and those attacks detract
> from trying to solve a system problem. I hope that you find these
> sentences easy to read, with only one comma contained in the sentences in
> order to satisfy you.
> 
> Regarding the problem, given that the delay is apparent, regardless of the
> application used to send messages, and the other information above, how do
> I eliminate the delay?
> 
> -- 
> Bret Busby
> ..............
> 
>