Managing services

Services overview

Sympa services

Several daemons collaboratively provide mailing list service.

• archived.pl

  Archiving daemon.

• bounced.pl

  Bounce processing daemon.

• bulk.pl

  Daemon for submitting messages to mail transfer agent (MTA). It may fork several workers as necessity.

• sympa_msg.pl

  Daemon to handle incoming messages. It may fork several workers as necessity.

• task_manager.pl

  Daemon to process periodical tasks.

And optionally:

• sympa_automatic.pl

  Automatic list creation daemon. It may be invoked by sympa_msg.pl as necessity.

Mail transfer agent (MTA)

Mail transfer agent (MTA) injects incoming messages into incoming spool of Sympa, and takes outgoing messages from Sympa up to distribute them beyond Internet.

HTTP server and WWSympa

HTTP server provides users web interface on behalf of WWSympa (wwsympa.fcgi), the FastCGI server.

WWSympa may either be invoked by HTTP server or launch as an independent daemon.

Database server

Database server provides backend database for services above.

Signals

Daemons of Sympa services accept following signals:

• TERM

  Daemon finishes process in progress and then terminates safely. INT signal is also recognized.

• HUP

  For sympa_msg.pl and sympa_automatic.pl only. Daemon reloads configuration then continues processing.

Anyway, recommended procedure to reload, stop or start the services is described in succeeding sections.

Checking status of services

Checking status of Sympa services

• Systemd:

  # systemctl status 'sympa*'
  

• initscripts or FreeBSD ports:

  # service sympa status
  

Reloading services

Reloading Sympa services

• Systemd:

  # systemctl restart sympa
  # systemctl status sympa
  

• initscripts or FreeBSD ports:

  # service sympa restart
  # service sympa status
  

Reloading WWSympa

• Automatic reloading

  If wwsympa.fcgi script was updated, it detects change of itself and exits. Then WWSympa will be automatically reloaded.

  Exception is the case running separate FastCGI service with initscripts: If script exits, it have to be restared manually by executing such as:

  # service wwsympa start
  

• Forced reloading

  To force reloading, restart HTTP server.

  Exception is the case running separate FastCGI service (either with Systemd or initscripts): Only that service (wwsympa) may be reloaded by service wwsympa restart or systemctl restart wwsympa.

Stopping and starting services

Stopping services

1. Ensure that HTTP server is stopping.

   If you are running separate FastCGI service, only that service (wwsympa) may be stopped in many cases: HTTP server itself may not be stopped.

2. Ensure that mail server is stopping.

3. Stop Sympa services.

   • Systemd:

     # systemctl stop sympa
     # systemctl status sympa
     

   • initscripts:

     # service sympa stop
     # service sympa status
     

4. Database service may be stopped when all services above are stopping.

Starting services

1. Ensure that database service is running.

2. Start Sympa services.

   • Systemd:

     # systemctl start sympa
     # systemctl status sympa
     

   • initscripts or FreeBSD ports:

     # service sympa start
     # service sympa status
     

3. Start mail server.

4. Start HTTP server, if necessary.

   If you are running separate FastCGI service, that service (wwsympa) must be started along with HTTP server itself.