Recovering from log file (sendmail)

Ashley M. Kirchner ashley at pcraft.com
Tue May 10 00:13:44 UTC 2005


    I've had a mail spooler die on me today and after wrangling NIS+ for 
a bit, I got a second spooler up and running.  The problem now is that 
anything between 2AM and 1PM only exists in sendmail's log file (sm-mta) 
which was on a different machine anyway.  While I don't plan on scouring 
that file for any messages that have gone missing due to the spooler 
crashing, I have to wonder: is there some way of actually doing that?

    There's no hope of recovering the spooler, the drive failed, it 
won't spin up, it's just dead.  So really anything that came in between 
2AM (when the last backup ran) and 1PM (when the spooler died) is 
sitting in the log file.  Everyone in the building knows they're SOL 
when it comes to e-mails that arrived in that window, but in the back of 
my mind I know I can just as well scan that sm-mta log file and yank 
messages out of it.  I'm just wondering if there's some script floating 
out there that could possibly help (or am _I_ also SOL? <grin> )

-- 
W | I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape somewhere.
  +--------------------------------------------------------------------
  Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley at pcraft.com>   .   303.442.6410 x130
  IT Director / SysAdmin / Websmith             .     800.441.3873 x130
  Photo Craft Laboratories, Inc.            .     3550 Arapahoe Ave. #6
  http://www.pcraft.com ..... .  .    .       Boulder, CO 80303, U.S.A.





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