I have operated some mail dedicated server using redhat 9.0. About over 4,000 users use this mail server with pop3. But it is so slow and some spamd seems that spamd can't process well.
So I raise the number of children spawn like below.
SPAMDOPTIONS="-d -c -m9 ==> SPAMDOPTIONS="-d -c -m10 Is it a good method to increase the number to solve the problem? Or any other good method?
Raising the number of spamd can improve overall mail processing thruput, however there are some downsides to consider.
1) This will increase memory load on the system. If you add too many spamd's the system will start thrashing swap and system performance will severely degrade.
2) The increased number of processes can add overhead to the kernel process scheduler. With an O(1) (read "order one") scheduler like most recent linux kernels use this isn't a big deal, but on some systems with bulky fair schedulers this can slow things down if you start using really large numbers of spamd's (ie: 100).
3) this will increase load on the CPU, which can make other processes less responsive, such as your pop3 daemon.
