Cron/Sendmail Defunct Processes

[Adam Funk]

On 2007-12-04, Schiz0 wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 Server Edition. I have a cron script (
> http://pastebin.ca/803903 ). I edited crontab using "crontab -e"
> (Running as the ircd user) and added the line (
> http://pastebin.ca/805617 ). I have exim4 installed and running (I
> have send emails successfully from command line and also php scripts).

As what user(s)?


> It was installed and configured via apt-get and dpkg.
>
> My problem is as follows: When the anope services daemon is not
> running, the cron script starts it, and outputs some text (Which I
> want to to be emailed to me). But instead of emailing the output to
> me, cron opens up defunct zombie processes for sh and sendmail and I
> must kill the cron process to get rid of other processes.
>
> The output of "ps -ef" showing the defunct processes is at
> http://pastebin.ca/803916
> The sendmail process stays there until I kill the "/USR/SBIN/CRON" process.

I'd suggest trying the following:

* send mail from the command line as the ircd user;

* send mail from a cron job from your normal account.

There might be a configuration issue that prevents the MTA from
handling mail correctly from "non-user" accounts.