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Callmeed
Asked: 2009-06-25 11:49:32 +0800 CST

QMail keeps shutting down ... how to check and restart?

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On one of our Linux servers (running Plesk for basic hosting), QMail crashes/shuts down and all users on the server can't get mail.

This happens about 2 or 3 times a week. No other services are affected (apache keeps humming along just fine).

What are some options for checking/restarting QMail in this scenario? Some sort of cron job–or perhaps install ruby and god?

linux email

2 Answers

  1. The DJB way would be to use daemontools. Specifically, supervise.

    At my site, I'd be using puppet, which checks on all puppet-managed services every half hour and starts them back up if they've died for some reason. Something like:

    service {
  "qmail":
    ensure => running,
    enable => true,
    require => Package["qmail"];
}

    But more importantly: find out why it's dying, and stop it from doing that. Seriously. Or switch to a mailer daemon that doesn't die on you. I recommend postfix or exim.

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  2. daemontools is a good option.

    Another one - that doesn't involve changing the way your service starts, and thus might be easier to add in to production, is "monit".

    http://mmonit.com/monit/

    You can also set up how many times it should restart and other actions that it should do at the same time (eg. fire off an email to an email/SMS gateway).

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