John Horne wrote: > On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 16:03 +0100, John Horne wrote: > > > > > The server has 2GB of ram. It runs an MTA and SA, but does not do > > virus checking. I only installed 3.1.4 yesterday, so it is a little > > early to say if there are problems. However, I am seeing in the > > logs messages like these: > > > > Sep 6 15:58:11 tracy spamd[13052]: prefork: server reached > > --max-children setting, consider raising it > > > > SA seems to indicate that the value should be raised rather than > > lowered.
SA will always suggest that you increase the setting whenever you reach the limit. It is up to you to take into account your memory usage and determine if it is a good idea. SA will slow things down a bit if it doesn't have enough children, but it will bring things to a screeching halt if the children get swapped out of memory. > Actually these messages seem to be a bit confusing. The log shows: > > Sep 6 16:05:39 tracy spamd[13052]: prefork: child states: KKKKKKBB > Sep 6 16:05:39 tracy spamd[13052]: prefork: server reached > --max-children setting, consider raising it > > Which seems to indicate that 2 children are busy but 6 have been > killed. Why should I then raise the value? Surely it should just > restart one of the killed children? If it said 'BBBBBBBB' then I > would understand it suggesting to raise the value. If that many children exist, they must have been busy at one time. Try doing 'grep prefork /var/log/maillog' to get an idea of how the children have been operating. -- Bowie
