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

[Raymond Dijkxhoorn]

Hi!

> 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?

This means the response of the RBL server is too slow, might be a busy
RBL or network problems somewhere.

> 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.

Its all depending on the mail load you have, its not a very heavy box
anyway, but for low volume it should be ok.

Bye,
Raymond.