Hi
I am using sendmail as my mail server. When i was checking the
log files i found some logs as follows.

MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:02
-23021/6589687
MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:02 -6411/7602959
MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:03
-4364/11725477

But i dont really understand what exactly end part of these logs (with
negative values) means.
Can anyone please help what does this negative values represents.
(-23021/6589687)

Biju

biju.blore [at] gmail.com schrieb:
> Hi
> I am using sendmail as my mail server. When i was checking the
> log files i found some logs as follows.
>
> MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:02
> -23021/6589687
> MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:02 -6411/7602959
> MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:03
> -4364/11725477
>
> But i dont really understand what exactly end part of these logs (with
> negative values) means.
> Can anyone please help what does this negative values represents.
> (-23021/6589687)

That doesn't look like anything Sendmail would produce.
In fact, it doesn't even look like an excerpt from any Unix/Linux logfile.
Can you explain in a bit more detail where you found these?

--
Please excuse my bad English/German/French/Greek/Cantonese/Klingon/...

On Aug 28, 5:36 pm, Tilman Schmidt <ts-usenet0... [at] pxnet.com> wrote:
> biju.bl... [at] gmail.com schrieb:
>
> > Hi
> > I am using sendmail as my mail server. When i was checking the
> > log files i found some logs as follows.
>
> > MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:02
> > -23021/6589687
> > MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:02 -6411/7602959
> > MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23 21:03
> > -4364/11725477
>
> > But i dont really understand what exactly end part of these logs (with
> > negative values) means.
> > Can anyone please help what does this negative values represents.
> > (-23021/6589687)
>
> That doesn't look like anything Sendmail would produce.
> In fact, it doesn't even look like an excerpt from any Unix/Linux logfile.
> Can you explain in a bit more detail where you found these?
>
> --
> Please excuse my bad English/German/French/Greek/Cantonese/Klingon/...

Hi,

This problem is happening when some is returned back to us.There
was a mistake in the explaination i told earlier..
It snot from the log files that this is seen, Its seen when i read the
particular file using "mail -f" command. I am mentioning the things i
did.
Let "mailuser" be the folder of the user in which mail is stored.
Below I am mentioning the output of the command also

mail -f /var/spool/mail/mailuser

Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help.
"mail user": 3 messages 3 unread
>U 1 MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23
21:02 -23021/6589687
>U 2 MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23
21:02 -6411/7602959
>U 3 MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23
21:03 -4364/11725477

The no:of lines/Size is shown as negative. I dont really know. what
exactly does it mean, and how it works... So Please do help.

Thanks & Regards,
Biju

In article <1188438326.760151.168510 [at] k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
biju.blore [at] gmail.com writes:
>Let "mailuser" be the folder of the user in which mail is stored.
>Below I am mentioning the output of the command also
>
> mail -f /var/spool/mail/mailuser
>
> Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help.
> "mail user": 3 messages 3 unread
> >U 1 MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23
>21:02 -23021/6589687
> >U 2 MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23
>21:02 -6411/7602959
> >U 3 MAILER-DAEMON [at] mailserver. Thu Aug 23
>21:03 -4364/11725477
>
>The no:of lines/Size is shown as negative. I dont really know. what
>exactly does it mean, and how it works... So Please do help.

That's a bug in your 'mail' program, and has nothing to do with the
program 'sendmail' that is discussed in this group. The numbers are
typically calculated by 'mail' when it reads your mailbox, and obviously
messages can't have a negative # of lines. Perhaps it uses a 16-bit
counter that overflows - I assume that you only see it on "large"
messages.

--Per Hedeland
per [at] hedeland.org