memory footprint

[Julian Field]

At 21:43 15/02/2003, you wrote:
> > > >Is there any way to slim mailscanner down, especially the parent
> > > > process?
> > >
> > > As it is virtually all swapped out, what's the point?
> >
> > It's there, needlessly consuming system resources.
> >
> > As I understand it the mailscanner perl program first "uses" all the
> > Modules it will ever need and then forks. I thought about a scenario where
> > the parent process first forks and then the children load all the modules
> > they require for their work. Wouldn't that make the parent a lot more
> > lightweight?
>
>As far as I can see, MailScanner is supposed to be optimized on speed not on
>the memory footprint. There is a certain tradeoff between those two and you
>just have to set the flag somewhere. Loading the modules on demand would
>cause a certain performance impact. And although most of the memory is shared
>memory at all (modules get used by all the child processes) I suppose memory
>isn't quite a big problem even for greater mail gateways running M.S.

Well put.
If you want to save memory, run less child processes. 1 or 2 is sufficient
on lightly-loaded servers.
--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support