UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

This is definitely a post from a "UNIX Newbie" - we have a SCO Unix machine that houses our customer database. I have been getting reports that the system starts lagging intermittently, and have managed to determine that the cause of the slowdown is a process called MMDF.

I can manually kill this process to improve system performance, but I would rather turn this off altogether since we dont use it. (As I understand it, MMDF is an email program of sorts...we dont use the Unix machine for email at all...)

Any suggestions are welcome!

(If you have any questions regarding the Unix machine, please provide instructions as to how to look up the info you need - Im still fairly new to Unix.... )

Here's someone who seems to have been having the same problem.. see if the link in the last post helps at all.

I found that article as well, however it doesnt help my situation. All it does is delete the messages that cannot be delivered. The mail service still starts itself and tries to deliver messages, resulting in undeliverable messages that generate more undeliverable messages...in an infinite loop.

What Im hoping is that someone can give me some instructions for disabling MMDF altogether since we do not use it.

Here's another reference:

SCO Article - TA #104790
So perhaps you should look into this "custom" command, if you have it installed, which is used to install, remove, or list software products and components. Try typing "man custom" at a prompt...

Hmmm, Im getting closer. I tried custom -d mmdf which supposedly disables the software package called mmdf, but I get a lot of errors such as:

Fatal Error:
Unable to start custom on scosrv.csds.uucp. Possibly, custom is
already running or user is not authorized to run custom.

Error Stack:
Can't obtain system database lock file. Only one invocation of custom allowed. Lock of client lock file failed
Permission denied

This is while I was logged in as root...does anyone know what kind of effect it would have on the system if I just uninstalled MMDF altogether from the software administration panel?