On Fri, 21 May 2010, Bowie Bailey wrote:
> Jean-Paul Natola wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am constantly getting the server reached --max children setting entries
> > in my log
> >
> > I started with 10 max children and have been raising it by 2. I am now at
> > 40 , but still getting the messages (though not as often) how high can I go
> > given these specs:
> >
> > sa 3.3 on freebsd , hardware is a PIV 1.3 ghz with 1 gig of ram 20 gig
> > 5400 rpm PATA drive, and processing an average of 8000 messages a day.
> >
> > When running top I have seen swap usage go as high as ~500M
> >
>
> Lower it until you see the swap usage go away. Having messages waiting
> for an available child is MUCH better than having the system using swap.
Can you tune your MTA to limit the number of incoming SMTP connections?
8000 messages a day works out to about 5 per minute, so on average you
shouldn't have more than 2 or 3 simultaneous messages in the queue. This
probably means that you're getting hit with sporadic spam/dictionary
attack floods that may peak at multiple messages/second.
Throttle those at the incoming MTA and your SA should be much happier.
One other question, that 8000 messages a day, are those total incoming
messages or 8000 ham messages? Assuming a 90% spam rate, to get 8000 hams
a day you need to process 80,000 total incoming messages a day.
That's probably too big a work load for that little P4 box unless
you have serious MTA filtering in front of it (RBLs, graylisting, etc).
--
Dave Funk University of Iowa
<dbfunk (at) engineering.uiowa.edu> College of Engineering
319/335-5751 FAX: 319/384-0549 1256 Seamans Center
Sys_admin/Postmaster/cell_admin Iowa City, IA 52242-1527
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
Better is not better, 'standard' is better. B{
