The numbers of pickup (in postfix) process

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Environment

  • RHEL6.x
  • Postfix

Issue

  • Customer planned to monitor availability of postfix.
  • Observed that pickup processes are sometimes shows count '0'.
  • Is it normal activity that pickup processes is not resident in memory ?

Resolution

  • Yes. It's normal behaviour of 'pickup' process. pickup procsess doesn't operate as residential process.

Root Cause

  • When postfix started, pickup process also called from start-up script. But, unlike 'master process' of postfix, pickup process has limited life time. They will die after they handled a certain number of requests.the number showing their life is defined as 'max_use' parameter on /etc/postfix/main.cf, and this parameter set 100 on RHEL6.This default value mean that 'pickup' process will die , after they handle 100 request.

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