sendmail stopped working suddenly

[maps]

Our production server (solaris 5.9) had sendmail working till a few
days back and all of a sudden it stopped working. We were using
sendmail in the following manner:

cat mailfile | /usr/lib/sendmail -t

Now since yesterday the above command throws an error upon invocation:

stdin: Value too large for defined data type

strangely enough, the following works just fine:

/usr/lib/sendmail -t < mailfile

Nobody from the admin team seems to have a clue (I am not from the
admin team but am still curious). Has anyone on the group ever
encountered this issue ? If so, what is the solution ?

A slightly different doubt - why cant mailx send mime mails while
sendmail can ? If it can, how ?

[maps]

Henning,

Thanks for your reply ! Let me point out some more details of the
problem we are facing:

1. "mailfile" is in a few kilobytes.
2. actually we use sed to replace email placeholder and then pipe it
to sendmail in the following manner:
sed 's/RECIPIENT_MAIL_ID/some_email_id/' mailfile | /usr/lib/
sendmail -t
3. The problem persists whether you use sed, or cat (as in my previous
message).
4. Ironically, the same command line was working a few days back and
all of sudden it stops working over the weekend.
5. Heres the surprising aspect of this problem: This is not limited to
cat or sendmail; it seems to be a more generic problem. For ex. if I
issue the following command:
zcat somearchive.Z | diff somefile -
the error thrown is "diff: stdin: Value too large for defined data
type"

We dont have control over compiling of utilities over our production
servers (heck we dont have that control even on our development
servers). They are handled by Solaris admins who by the way have so
far been unable to identify the problem; let alone resolve it.

Thanks.

PS: Our production box has Solaris 5.9 64-bit for Sun Sparc

[Henning Hucke]

On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, maps wrote:

> Henning,
>
> Thanks for your reply ! Let me point out some more details of the
> problem we are facing:

> [... Further details ...]

Hi,

the further details indeed point to a general problem. The SUN support
pages to which your admins should have access to obviously know a lot
about this problem and very likely about the solution (I have no account
there).

At least its obviously no sendmail problem. Asking in a solaris related
group should give you the solution where it might be helpfull so just cite
the error message.

> [...]

> We dont have control over compiling of utilities over our production
> servers (heck we dont have that control even on our development
> servers). They are handled by Solaris admins who by the way have so
> far been unable to identify the problem; let alone resolve it.

Hmpf! %-) Useless use of seperation of administration teams (platform vs.
application), not?

In the last years lot of rubbish was implemented all over the world
against advice of people who worked for years in these areas who new the
problematic parts...
Strange evolution...

> Thanks.

You are welcome.

Regards
Henning Hucke
--
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his
intellectual nakedness.
-- Robert M. Hutchins

[maps]

> At least its obviously no sendmail problem. Asking in a solaris related
> group should give you the solution where it might be helpfull so just cite
> the error message.

True; I realized this earlier today and posted another thread in
comp.unix.solaris. Here's the link if you wanna jump in as well :D
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.solaris/browse_thread/thread/19ca186f6100a2b5#

-maps