[Techtalk] postfix reload (Was: filtering spam with spamassassin)

[Maria Blackmore]

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003, showercurtain wrote:

> What I'm worried about is that doing "postfix reload" will cause the
> mail server to restart. According to some documentation on this
> command, "postfix reload" causes postfix configuration files to be
> re-read and running processes will terminate at the earliest
> convenience.  Does anyone know if this will affect email services for
> users?  There are 900 of them (not 100 like I previously thought) and
> I don't want to cause a problem I don't know how to fix :L

What postfix reload does is signal all the postfix processes that they
need to exit at their earliest convenience so that new processes can be
started by the master process with the new configuration in place.  From a
user's point of view this process is completely transparent since the
processes do not exit until they have finished whatever it is they were
doing.  This means, eg, that any processes handling incoming SMTP email
will finish the connection they're on, whilst new connections will only be
handled by newly spawned processes.  Likewise, any in-progress email
deliveries will be completed, and any subsequent deliveries will be
carried out by newly spawned processes.

To summarise once again, the "postfix reload" command is not disruptive to
any portion of your email system, whilst ensuring that the latest
configuration is used.  The closest analogy, perhaps, is the "apachectl
graceful" command.

have fun

Maria