From nobody@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 19 23:05:42 1999
Return-Path: <nobody@FreeBSD.ORG>
Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 32767)
	id C90A0152EF; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 23:05:42 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <19990420060542.C90A0152EF@hub.freebsd.org>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 23:05:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: jef@cs.miami.edu
Sender: nobody@FreeBSD.ORG
To: freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org
Subject: sendmail 3.9.1 kills the system dead when it receives a specific message from vm.sc.edu
X-Send-Pr-Version: www-1.0

>Number:         11231
>Category:       bin
>Synopsis:       sendmail 3.9.1 kills the system dead when it receives a specific message from vm.sc.edu
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    grog
>State:          closed
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:  
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Apr 19 23:10:01 PDT 1999
>Closed-Date:    Mon May 3 16:22:26 PDT 1999
>Last-Modified:  Mon May  3 16:24:47 PDT 1999
>Originator:     jef moskot
>Release:        3.0CAM-1998080806-SNAP
>Organization:
University of Miami
>Environment:
FreeBSD hurricane.cs.miami.edu 3.0CAM-19980806-SNAP FreeBSD 3.0CAM-19980806-SNAP
 #0: Thu Sep 10 14:24:20 EDT 1998     root@hurricane.cs.miami.edu:/usr/src/sys/c
ompile/HURRICANE  i386 
>Description:
A message was sent to a user at vm.sc.edu (W000232@VM.SC.EDU) from one
of my users.  This user no longer exists at vm.sc.edu, and some kind
of automatic notification software keeps trying to deliver a message
to our system that kills it dead (the system hangs and the only way
to reboot is to cycle the power on the machine).

The message sent had hundreds of users listed in the Bcc: field, which
was the only abnormal thing about it.  I don't know if the off-site
machine knows about other addresses in the Bcc: field, so this might
not have anything to do with the problem.
>How-To-Repeat:
Just reboot our machine and the offending file will try to be sent to
hurricane.cs.miami.edu and will kill us dead.

I have not attempted to send another message to that address, for fear
that it will imprison another of our mail servers.
>Fix:
I have rerouted mail thru a different server on our side and for some
reason this message does not attempt to connect to this server (or
at least sendmail there (8.8.8) does not record any attempts.

However, we are currently a prisoner of this message.  If the sendmail
daemon is turned on on hurricane, the system will take a dive within
minutes.

This has happened once before and we waited a week before routing mail
back thru the original server and things were fine until another message
was sent to that address.  The message probably timed out on the other
side, altho that is just a theory.

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
State-Changed-From-To: open->feedback 
State-Changed-By: grog 
State-Changed-When: Mon Apr 19 23:36:17 PDT 1999 
State-Changed-Why:  
Waiting for feedback from submitter 


Responsible-Changed-From-To: freebsd-bugs->grog 
Responsible-Changed-By: grog 
Responsible-Changed-When: Mon Apr 19 23:36:17 PDT 1999 
Responsible-Changed-Why:  
grog's looking at this one. 
State-Changed-From-To: feedback->closed 
State-Changed-By: grog 
State-Changed-When: Mon May 3 16:22:26 PDT 1999 
State-Changed-Why:  
Timed out on feedback from submitter. 
>Unformatted:

Greg Lehey, 20 April 1999:

        You're running a SNAP of 3.0 on a production server?  That's a
        lot more likely to be your problem than sendmail.  You should
        really upgrade as soon as you can.

        To get rid of the message, just delete it (or, if you're
        interested, and it doesn't contain any confidential
        information, move it somewhere else and keep it for playing
        around with).  It should be in /var/spool/mqueue as a pair of
        files with names like dfKAA34645 and and qfKAA34645 (the names
        the same except for the first letter).  The headers are in the
        'q' file.

        I'd like to close this PR unless you can demonstrate that it
        still happens on a currently supported version of FreeBSD.  Is
        that OK?

Greg Lehey, 4 May 1999

	I have received no feedback, so I'm closing this PR.  If you
	can reproduce this problem on 3.1 or later, please enter a new
	PR.

