If Sendmail takes several minutes to start, and your PHP scripts hangs when attempting to send emails via sendmail (eg: using the mail() function), ensure that your hosts file has its host name as an alias to localhost.

For instance, your hosts file should look something like this:

[leo@crow ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain localhost
109.169.59.122                     crow

You would want to add your host name to 127.0.0.1:

[leo@crow ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain localhost crow
109.169.59.122                     crow

Once that’s done, Sendmail should start and work normally.

The following is the unixbench benchmark ran on the XEN-PV Aquatic package offered at DamnVPS (ThrustVPS)

========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.2)

   System: crow: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.33.3 -- #1 SMP Thu May 13 22:30:34 BST 2010
   Machine: x86_64 (x86_64)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
   CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz (4788.0 bogomips)
          Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSENTER/SYSEXIT, SYSCALL/SYSRET
   18:49:48 up  5:11,  2 users,  load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01; runlevel 3

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Fri Jul 30 2010 18:49:48 - 19:18:08
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       14337184.0 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     2868.0 MWIPS (9.9 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               1545.8 lps   (29.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        243675.8 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           62276.1 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks        705056.0 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                              363431.4 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                  72559.7 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                               3171.4 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   2853.2 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    389.9 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         421968.1 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   14337184.0   1228.6
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       2868.0    521.5
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       1545.8    359.5
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     243675.8    615.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      62276.1    376.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     705056.0   1215.6
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     363431.4    292.1
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      72559.7    181.4
Process Creation                                126.0       3171.4    251.7
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       2853.2    672.9
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        389.9    649.8
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     421968.1    281.3
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                         466.6