Hi there, I have a server that regularly runs jobs to import email via IMAP from remote servers. The cron runs a bash scrip that in turn iterates through the customer's install directories and then goes through each mail box that users have configured and parses the email. This is done by going back to get 100 email headers checking that the message ID hasn't been imported and if not getting the full body. The problem is that these jobs seem to run over each other and then eventually (occasionally) it will hang the server. I've tried a few things like getting less headers, spacing the cron jobs out and using lock files but neither combination has resolved this issue. I suspect that some of the IMAP services take too long to respond or rate limit connections (but since I don't control them I can't be sure). I am looking for suggestions as to: - How to fix the underlying problem - How to configure Nagios to monitor specific processes Many thanks Piers