spamd and spamd child

[Greg Ennis <Po...@PoMec.Net>]

I just installed 3.0.1 to replace 2.63 and have noticed a tremendous
improvement in speed.  I am using a RH 8.0 system with spamc being
executed by /etc/procmailrc.

I have limited the child processes to 3, and noticed that the child
processes do not appear to die although their time and dates do appear
to change.

root     19782     1  0 Nov02 ?   00:00:21 /usr/bin/spamd -d -c -m 3
root      6162 19782  2 Nov03 ?   00:29:07 spamd child
root     15840 19782  2 09:11 ?   00:04:08 spamd child
root     16425 19782  2 09:51 ?   00:03:41 spamd child

Is this a normal function of 3.0.1 or do I need to be concerned?

Thanks,

Greg Ennis

Re: spamd and spamd child

[Loren Wilton <lw...@earthlink.net>]

> I have limited the child processes to 3, and noticed that the child
> processes do not appear to die although their time and dates do appear
> to change.
>
> Is this a normal function of 3.0.1 or do I need to be concerned?

Normal function.  SA now starts up some children and then hands them
messages to play with, rather than starting up a new child for each message.
After a while the children get old (200 messages by default) and are
replaced.

Note that you may want to limit --max-con-per-child to some fairly small
number like 20.  There were rather bad problems in 3.0, mostly fixed in 3.01
with the children getting huge and forcing you into swap.  Killing them
quicker reduces the chance of this being a problem.

        Loren