Quite serendipitously I discovered that the above processes had stopped running on a potato system (i386) I have here. I noticed my 'locate' command did not seem to be returning good results, and when I looked it was dated Oct 18. Then 'ps ax' told the Rest of the Story. A reboot brought those three services up and all seems well now. Three questions occur to me:
1] What might bring about those three processes (and no others, apparently) dying? 2] What might be the reason I did not get notification that there was a problem? I notice the user aliased for root and postmaster's mail did not get notified of the problem, and in fact does not seem to be getting *any* system reports. I coulda sworn I ran 'newaliases' after I set up /etc/aliases. 3] I note this language in 'man aliases': "After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who have a ".forward" file in their home directory have messages forwarded to the list of users defined in that file." Does this mean the user who I have aliased to get root and postmaster's must have a .forward file in his home directory in order to get mail for root and postmaster? I don't understand the connection between aliasing and .forward files. I have the used the latter, for instance with procmail, or send mail on to another email address, but why this mention of .forward in 'man aliases'. Sorry to go on so long here. Many tia's for light shed on any of the above confusions! -- Bob Bernstein at Esmond, R.I., USA
