Mailscanner server becoming unresponsive, high disk activitity

[mikea]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 04:22:48AM -0500, Orbitel Webmaster wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> ==> From: mikea <mikea at MIKEA.ATH.CX>
> ==> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 15:42:32 -0500
>
> On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 04:10:28AM -0500, Orbitel Webmaster wrote: >
> If I start mailscanner on my server it freezes the whole box within 2
> > hours.  When it freezes disk activity goes non-stop until I hit the
> > reset key. > > This is without load, or a very small load, going
> through > mailscanner.  If I turn off the mailscanner service the
> problem > disappears. > > Any advice?
>
> How much Ram?
> 128
>  How much swap?
> 64 meg partition -- but its not allocated and thats too little.
> This most likely the problem.  I'll dump a gig of ram in the machine
> (its pc133 and just laying around anyways) and fix the swap problem.
>  What OS? redhat 8.0?  7.2?
> What speed CPU?
> p-3 700
>
> thank you -- I feel embarassed.

Well, as I wrote in my initial response, I started off with a really
runty box, which came off the to-surplus pallet. It sort-of-worked
for a while, but then the load just got to be too much. It appears
that I'm not alone.

It's the RAM that's the key here; a 200 MHz or so PeeCee should be
able to keep up with my load (about 5K mails/day inbound), though
not necessarily with any other site's load.

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