a paleonet hypothesis

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        Hi all ---

        Thanks to everyone who replied to my request.  I appreciate all the
support from the community; it makes a difference!   Looking through all the
messages, I have not found a pattern with mailers or with position in the
queue.  I do have a potential explanation for all the messages with no body
however.  Until some fixes were made to the listserver software last week,
we had  periodic core dumps of the software.  Usually when the software
shuts down, it keeps all the undelivered mail in the queue and starts
delivery when the software starts back up.  In the case of a core abort
where the software does not send a shutdown signal, the sendmails that are
spawned by the software may not get shut down.  In this case, messages get
sent without any body appended into the messages.

        We have not had a core abort in six days. The software seems more
stable now than in the past five months and I have hopes that we may be
weathering the storm.  I need to ask one more favor.  If anyone receives a
blank email message (no body) in the next week, please immediately forward
me the message so that I can continue to monitor the situation.

Cheers,
Robert Guralnick
UCMP and IB
Berkeley, CA 94720

Robert Guralnick | Museum of Paleontology | Department of Integrative Biology
University of California | Berkeley, CA 94720 | (510) 643-9746 |
robg@ucmp1.berkeley.edu