SunONE / SunJES Messaging server

Question

Hi,
Just a general question regarding the SunONE / SunJES messaging server.
We've got a HA-clustered messaging/messagestore environment
From experience we know that on the message store, when you edit the {instanceroot}/imta/config/ims-ms_option file, it becomes active after about 15 minutes when the ims_master proces restarts itself. Any changes in number of threads can be easily spotted with prstat so therefore we know when it restarts it uses the new config.
Now comes the question.
When I would make any changes to the {instanceroot}/imta/config/imta.cnf file
Does the tcp_smtp_server proces restart itself using the new config or does it keep on using the old 'current' configuration'
Looking @ the proceslist I do notice that the processes restart because the STIME keep changing :)
So just wondering does anybody know this So I do not have to schedule (unnessecary) outage for a restart to make the changes active.
-Martin
The versions we're using are :
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iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 2.02 (built Oct 21 2004)
libimta.so 5.2 HotFix 2.02 (built 13:42:55, Oct 21 2004)
SunOS goud 5.8 Generic_117350-20 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-880
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and the other cluster.
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Sun Java(tm) System Messaging Server 6.2 (built Dec 2 2004)
libimta.so 6.2 (built 00:34:23, Dec 2 2004)
SunOS chroom 5.9 Generic_118558-02 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V890
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The two different versions are there, 'cause we're currently in a migration stage SunONE 5.2 to SunJES

Answer 1

All of the MTA processes are "short lived", and get periodically restarted.
ims-ms is restarted by the job_controller. You can "refresh" these manually, without users even nopticing.
tcp_smtp_server processes are owned by the dispatcher process. They live for a time, or a maximum number of messages, and are started as needed. You can refresh them manually, too, with no user impact.
to refresh the processes that are owned by the job_controller, give:
imsimta restart job_controller
for the ones owned by the dispatcher
imsimta restart dispatcher
None of the processes is designed to read configuration at any time other than startup, so if you change the configuration, first you need to "compile" that configuration:
imsimta cnbuild
and then you can either wait for the restart, or give one of the commands I put above.
For messaging 5.x, you need to freeze the HA cluster before restartring, as the restart will trigger a failover. For JES messaging 6, the HA agents are much more sophisticated, and will understand what you're doing.