Restarting Postfix Mailserver sometime returns errors

Hey Dirk,

This is a problem we've seen on <i>many</i> Virtuozzo and vserver systems. I'll assume that's what this is?

There seems to be some kind of issue on these systems where memory allocations fail at random. This is a serious bug in those platforms, and I don't have any solution to the problem (it's a bug in the kernel or glibc on that platform...nothing I can do to fix it). It's been known to exist for at least a year (googling turns up mentions of it, and we've got a few users running on vservers and virtuozzos that started reporting it, at least a year ago), so I'm not sure how likely we are to see a fix for it.

Some users report reductions in frequency of these errors after reducing memory usage drastically. See my response to your memory reporting issue thread a couple of minutes ago for ideas on reducing memory usage. Not all users found reducing memory (or increasing their allotment with the provider) solved the problem to a satisfactory degree. The best you can do is try cutting your memory usage, and if it doesn't work, switch to a platform that isn't so cantankerous. (I think virtualization is the future of this industry...and I'm excited about it...but Virtuozzo and vservers just can't be recommended until these memory bugs have been fixed.)