Skipping queue run -- load average too high

Martin Hepworth martinh at SOLID-STATE-LOGIC.COM
Wed Dec 10 09:09:26 GMT 2003


Harry Hanson wrote:
>>>-----Message d'origine-----
>>>De : Harry Hanson [mailto:harryh at CET.COM] Envoyé : Tuesday, 
>>
>>December 
>>
>>>09, 2003 9:17 PM À : MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK Objet : Re: 
>>
>>Skipping 
>>
>>>queue run -- load average too high
>>>
>>>
>>>Dual 1.6 xeon, 1gb memory, 10k rpm u320 scsi drives in 
>>
>>raid0 config, 
>>
>>>1gb ram.
>>
>>What is your daily mail volume?
> 
> 
> Here's and example from midnight to current time:
> 
> Log starts at Dec 9 00 00:01 and ends at Dec 9 21 41:42
> 
> Total bytes transferred: 1496649 
> Total bytes In:  0
> Messages Out: 33742
> Messages In: 0
> 
> Messages per hour (each dot is 181 messages)
> ________________
>   0:    827 ....
>   1:    838 ....
>   2:    745 ....
>   3:    793 ....
>   4:    778 ....
>   5:    804 ....
>   6:    805 ....
>   7:    856 ....
>   8:    781 ....
>   9:    839 ....
>  10:    748 ....
>  11:    871 ....
>  12:    799 ....
>  13:    778 ....
>  14:    823 ....
>  15:   9056 ..................................................
>  16:   6625 ....................................
>  17:   1462 ........
>  18:   1478 ........
>  19:   1383 .......
>  20:   1364 .......
>  21:   1056 .....
>  22:      0
>  23:      0
> 
> 
> 
>>>Freebsd 5.1
>>>
>>>It would seem to me either an I/O issue, as the cpu rarely 
>>
>>exceeds 5% 
>>
>>>useage, or perhaps I have something set too low?
>>>
>>
>>If you've got vmstat on freebsd, use it... type vmstat 1.
>>
>>this will tell you if you have processes waiting for I/O.  
>>(see man vmstat)
> 
> 
> My apoligies; I am rather a newbie with freebsd; this is my first. Here's a
> current snapshot (tho I have to read the man page more; it scrolls
> coninually and not sure how to interpret the output): 
> 
> 
> procs      memory      page                    disks     faults      cpu
>  r b w     avm    fre  flt  re  pi  po  fr  sr aa0 aa1   in   sy  cs us sy
> id
>  0 0 0  224380 314004 11724   0   0   0 10377   0  17   0  533    0 2964 34
> 28 38
>  0 1 0  224896 313344  147   0   0   0  41   0   3  57  688    0 1570  2 11
> 87
>  0 0 1  221424 315056   48   0   0   0 469   0   0   5  445    0 595  0  4
> 96
>  0 1 1  224296 313860  331   0   0   0  80   0   0  26  553    0 927  1  5
> 94
>  0 0 1  224332 313400  124   0   0   0  43   0   0  32  626    0 1106  1  5
> 94
>  0 0 1  226080 312884 5447   0   0   0 4632   0   8  32  660    0 1577 16 13
> 71
>  0 0 1  222444 314720  178   0   0   0 685   0   0  56  714    0 1401  1  8
> 91
>  0 0 1  222940 314612  292   0   0   0 305   0   0  30  492    0 782  0  4
> 96
>  0 0 1  223712 314196  113   0   0   0  13   0   0   0  404    0 488  0  4
> 96
>  0 0 3  233728 311680 5302   0   0   0 4153   0  10   0  490    0 981  9 15
> 76
>  0 0 1  220824 315280 3880   0   0   0 4300   0   2   0  593    0 1151 14 10
> 76
>  0 0 1  219360 315836  266   0   0   0 436   0   0  24  553    0 929  1  4
> 95
>  0 2 1  220908 315104  468   0   0   0 315   0   0   7  607    0 1027  1  7
> 92
>  0 0 1  219352 316120  256   0   0   0 557   0   0  43  602    0 1086  1  5
> 94
>  0 1 2  224964 313308 6070   0   0   0 4839   0  20   9  518    0 1083 11 16
> 72
>  0 0 0  221508 315068 3038   0   0   0 3045   0   0  17  641    0 1304 16  8
> 76
>  0 0 0  221552 315000  135   0   0   0 130   0   0  11  496    0 744  0  6
> 94
>  0 0 0  220272 315616  117   0   0   0 303   0  11  36  540    0 914  1  4
> 95
>  0 0 0  220264 315652  362   0   0   0 387   0   0   9  517    0 777  1  4
> 95
>  0 1 1  223036 314032 4288   0   0   0 3483   0  12  19  567    0 1294 11 13
> 76
>  0 0 0  218800 316340 2958   0   0   0 3155   0   0  57  797    0 3355 13 18
> 69
>  0 0 0  215380 318212  488   0   0   0 971   0   0   9  540    0 855  0  7
> 92
>  procs      memory      page                    disks     faults      cpu

hmm seems to be page faulting quite a bit, which is unusual for 
something relatively high CPU/memory wise.

what checks have you got on SA and MS? Esp what checks are running for 
RBL's and pyzor?

sendmail is saying the machine is too busy to process mail, hence the 
log messages..

you say you've got the disk configured as RAID 0 (striping), is this 
hardware or software RAID (vinum?).

have you turned on softupdates on the filesystem containing the spool 
files - this can make alot of difference as regards I/O.

How have you split up the filesystems? single / or /, /usr, /home and /var?

Just wondering why you choose FreeBSD 5.1 as this is still considered 
'unstable'? The current 'stable' release is 4.9. But my tests seem to 
indicate 5.x tree is much faster than 4.8...

I run FreeBSD 4.8 with Exim 4.24 and MS 4.24 (no RBL's/pyzor) using 
Sophos-Savi and ClamAV with Mailwatch and the mysql DB all on the same 
machine - celeron 600mhz, single ATA1-100 disk and a single / partition. 
runs 9,000 messages a day without breaking above 1.5 on load average.

-- 
Martin Hepworth
Snr Systems Administrator
Solid State Logic
Tel: +44 (0)1865 842300


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