"<foo> timed out and was killed ..."

[mikea]

Would someone shine a light around and dispel some ignorance on
my part, please?

I see lots of these. Does it mean that the DNSBL server is just
too busy, or should I fire up tcpdump and watch the DNS activity
to see what's going on?

: Apr 21 08:39:55 isdmonitor MailScanner[93474]: RBL Check
:       <well-known-DNSBL-name> timed out and was killed, consecutive
:       failure 1 of 7
: Apr 21 08:39:55 isdmonitor MailScanner[93485]: RBL Check
:       <well-known-DNSBL-name> timed out and was killed, consecutive
:       failure 1 of 7

And do these mean that I need to get a faster CPU, or faster disk,
or at least to increase the SpamAssassin timeout value?

: Apr 21 08:40:49 isdmonitor MailScanner[93466]: SpamAssassin timed out
:       and was killed, consecutive failure 1 of 20
: Apr 21 08:41:04 isdmonitor MailScanner[93474]: SpamAssassin timed out
:       and was killed, consecutive failure 1 of 20

FWIW, I've already increased the timer values somewhat. The machine that
this is running on is underpowered (233 MHz), undersized (64 MBytes RAM),
and running IDE disks; the OS is vanilla FreeBSD 4.3, right off the CD.

--
Mike Andrews
mikea at mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin since 1964