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Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by davidstvz <da...@csc.lsu.edu> on 2010/05/21 18:32:28 UTC

System hangs on sending mail sometimes

I'm using spamassassin with sendmail via spamass-milter.  Many users are
using Open Webmail to read mail, and sometimes when they try to send, the
system hangs for 10+ seconds.  Often it sends immediately however.

When I setup the system, I remember reading somewhere that it might be a
good idea to restrict the number of threads that spamassassin can use, but I
don't remember how this was accomplished.  It looks like it is currently set
at 3.  

'ps -le | grep spam'  shows:

5 S     0  4053  4652  0  80   0 - 29330 -      ?        00:01:13 spamd
1 S     0  4652     1  0  80   0 - 25456 -      ?        00:03:27 spamd
1 S   102  4667     1  0  80   0 - 53277 114028 ?        00:03:48
spamass-milter
5 S     0 30204  4652  0  80   0 - 27538 -      ?        00:00:14 spamd

Any other ideas how to improve performance (or monitor the performance to
see if this is where the problem lies?)

Thanks,
David
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RE: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by davidstvz <da...@csc.lsu.edu>.
Sure enough, that error message is in the /var/log/mail.log file several
times a day.  I think this may be the problem I was having.  The limit is
now 5 so hopefully this will happen very infrequently now and perhaps it
will solve the problem.



Kaleb Hosie wrote:
> 
>> I'm using Debian.  Now the question is, will restoring 
>> maxchildren from 2 back to 5 help the problem?  I will have 
>> to wait and see.
>> 
> 
> One way of telling whether this is the problem or not is to search your
> maillog for an entry like the following:
> 
> Apr 27 05:59:45 mailgate spamd[23853]: prefork: server reached
> --max-children setting, consider raising it
> 
> 
> Kaleb
> 
>  
> 

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RE: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by Kaleb Hosie <kh...@spectraaluminum.com>.
> I'm using Debian.  Now the question is, will restoring 
> maxchildren from 2 back to 5 help the problem?  I will have 
> to wait and see.
> 

One way of telling whether this is the problem or not is to search your
maillog for an entry like the following:

Apr 27 05:59:45 mailgate spamd[23853]: prefork: server reached
--max-children setting, consider raising it


Kaleb

RE: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by davidstvz <da...@csc.lsu.edu>.
Ok, I did a broader search using:

cat `locate spamass | grep etc` | grep child

Turns out it's in /etc/defaults/spamassassin

I'm using Debian.  Now the question is, will restoring maxchildren from 2
back to 5 help the problem?  I will have to wait and see.


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RE: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by Kaleb Hosie <kh...@spectraaluminum.com>.
> Does anyone know where the setting for max-children is?
> 
> If I run 'ps aux | grep spam' I can see:
> 
> That spamd is run like so:
> 
> /usr/sbin/spamd --create-prefs --max-children 2 
> --helper-home-dir -d --pidfile=/var/run/spamd.pid
> 
> However, I do not see where to specify max-children in any 
> configuration file or the startup script.  It does not appear 
> in the local.cf file for example.
> 

If I'm not mistaken, it depends upon your distro.

I'm running centos and the location for me is:
/etc/sysconfig/spamassassin

Here's my options within that file:
SPAMDOPTIONS="-d -c --max-children=5 -H"

RE: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by davidstvz <da...@csc.lsu.edu>.
Does anyone know where the setting for max-children is?

If I run 'ps aux | grep spam' I can see:

That spamd is run like so:

/usr/sbin/spamd --create-prefs --max-children 2 --helper-home-dir -d
--pidfile=/var/run/spamd.pid

However, I do not see where to specify max-children in any configuration
file or the startup script.  It does not appear in the local.cf file for
example.


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RE: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by Kaleb Hosie <kh...@spectraaluminum.com>.
> I'm using spamassassin with sendmail via spamass-milter.  
> Many users are using Open Webmail to read mail, and sometimes 
> when they try to send, the system hangs for 10+ seconds.  
> Often it sends immediately however.

I would start with examining your maillog (/var/log/maillog). If that
doesn't help you find the solution, then the next thing to look at is your
message log (/var/log/messages).

Usually, these will help point you in the right direction.

Re: System hangs on sending mail sometimes

Posted by Jari Fredriksson <ja...@iki.fi>.
>
> I'm using spamassassin with sendmail via spamass-milter.  Many users are
> using Open Webmail to read mail, and sometimes when they try to send, the
> system hangs for 10+ seconds.  Often it sends immediately however.
>

You are scanning outgoing messages. Is this really a requirement?

If not, You could use other glue than milter for SpamAssassin, namely
procmail  or maildrop (whichever is used by your MTA), which processes
only incoming stuff.