Re: zmailer-2.96-940912.tar.gz available...

[Matti Aarnio <mea@nic.funet.fi>]

(I hope Nicholas doesn't mind me distributing my answer to him..)

> Matti --
> 	When you've got up steam again for the zmailer code, perhaps you would
> consider *not* adding any more features, but stabilizing what is there.

	Ooo..   :-O   --   No hacker spirit ?


	Seriously, I felt like an idiote when I let the previous code
	version out containing frequently crashing bugs..  This time
	I did let it to stabilize a bit -- that is after creating the
	features I did start using them, and found a bunch of core-drops.

	Once those became fixed, the system has served me faithfully now
	for four days, and I declare it to be worth a public access.

> I have stuck with a very very old version of zmailer here at PARC because
> I want our gateway to be able to run unattended.
> With the old version it can -- for at least a week, usually more.

	A version from couple weeks back is running on
	archie.funet.fi -- really unattented, and the last
	restart of the machine was due to a power fault,
	not software..

	Same is apparently true at  nic.funet.fi  which was
	restarted 6 days 55 minutes ago..

	At NIC I do see core-files in $POSTOFFICE/scheduler/,
	but those are from "INN-inews", not from Zmailer..

> And on the individual workstations, zmailer never gets looked at -- we
> automatically restart any process that dies, but we've had some systems
> running for over a year without the mail actually getting messed up from
> zmailer failures.     From the reports i've seen over the last few months
> the new code doesn't have a hope of being that reliable -- various things
> drop core files.   There's no way that I could justify upgrading
> to a version that is less reliable, even if it does have some more
> interesting features.

	Right, you are not the only one asking a slow-down and stabilized
	code.  We all need it, and now I am pretty sure we have it, or at
	least I do not get cores with my regular use...

> Nick Briggs
> Xerox PARC

	/Matti Aarnio	<mea@nic.funet.fi> <mea@utu.fi>