> From: Tony Earnshaw <tonni () billy ! demon ! nl> > > > We have had a couple of instances recently where our mail server became > > severely overloaded, with many spamd processes running. One was on the > > 21st when dorkslayers.com went down. The other was yesterday for no > > apparent reason. In each case, we had around 150 spamd processes > > running, with 2.5 GB of swap in use on a machine with 250 MB of memory! > > > > Each time I noticed that although there were around 150 spamd processes, > > there were only around 3 spamc processes. How is this possible? > > Could the spamc processes have timed out leaving the spamd processes > > running? Or could the mail have been processed and spamd is trying > > to do something else such as update the bayes database? > > This is something your MTA *should* be able to cope with and throttle. > > Both of the two MTAs I know and use, Exim 4 and Postfix 2.0.10, are > capable of this. > > Exim 4 (actually SA-Exim 4.20/3.0) does it best by using system load > (processes waiting in the run queue) to limit smtp 250 connections, > Postfix can be configured to limit the number of processes run by any > single configured daemon instance (I use amavisd-new as content filter.)
We use sendmail with procmail. Sendmail can limit the number of deliveries and I do have it set up to do that. BUT, when spamc exits, sendmail thinks that it can start another delivery. When the spamd processes continue to run after spamc exits, the spamd processes can build up. > > Possibly related, in what way does spamc timeout? Does it require that > > the whole message be processed within the timeout, or just that some > > response has happened within the timeout time? What happens if spamc > > starts a spamd process and then times out? Is the spamd processes > > notified that it should quit, or is it just left running? > > From what I've seen reported, horrible things happen with unconstrained > combinations of spamc/spamd. There is no provision for timeouts or > throttling. According to the output of spamc -h: -t: timeout in seconds to read from spamd. 0 disables. [default: 600] I was wondering just what happens after that 600 seconds. I just noticed that spamd has the following: -m num, --max-children num Allow maximum num children I have just added '-m 20' to the command line. Perhaps that will help. Still, I would like to know how spamd can continue to run after spamc exits. > Best, > > Tony Tom schulz Applied Dynamics Intl. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: eBay Get office equipment for less on eBay! http://adfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/711-11697-6916-5 _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
