Identify the cause of core.sendmail files getting created in vCenter

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This is to identify why sendmail core files may be created on a VMware vCenter server under /var/core/core.sendmail.<pid>

Environment

vCenter 8.0 U3

Cause

Look in journalctl to see why sendmail is creating the core files.

In this example, the cause is from a vCenter scheduled task that did not have a proper email address configured for the notification.

audit[3745860]: ANOM_ABEND auid=0 uid=26 gid=26 ses=<####> subj=unconfined pid=<####> comm="sendmail" exe="/usr/sbin/sendmail" sig=11 res=1
sendmail[3745860]: segfault at <####> ip <####> sp <####> error 6 in sendmail[<####>]
sendmail[3745873]: <####>: to=root, delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=<####>, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent
audit[3745859]: ANOM_ABEND auid=0 uid=1014 gid=0 ses=<####> subj=unconfined pid=<####> comm="sudo" exe="/usr/bin/sudo" sig=11 res=1
vpxd[6520]: Event [21594486] [1-1] [2025-12-31T02:00:01.743183Z] [vim.event.ScheduledTaskEmailFailedEvent] [error] [] [<DATACENTER>] [21594486] [Task <TASK> in datacenter <DATACENTER> cannot send email to <username>: A general system error occurred: Failed to send mail: ]

Resolution

Verify that the vCenter scheduled task is using a valid email for the email notification

Additional Information

How Do You Create a Scheduled vSphere Task