Mqueue.in is filling up! - Autoupdate Scripts

[Richard Bollinger]

Why are we delaying Mailscanner while waiting to retrieve files from the Internet?

We *should* be retrieving the files into a temporary location, verifying that the file transfers
succeeded, and only then locking Mailscanner for a few miliseconds while moving updated files in
place.

Of course, we should also try to fail gracefully for any reason including timeouts.

Rich B
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerry Doris" <gerry at DORFAM.CA>
To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: Mqueue.in is filling up!


> > I'm having a weird MailScanner problem.  Sendmail will sit there and start
> > tossing mail into the queue.in, not a problem with that.  However when I
> > look in the mail.log this is what I see:
> >
> > Jul 29 10:06:03 mustang MailScanner[238072]: MailScanner E-Mail Virus
> > Scanner version 4.20-3 starting...
> > Jul 29 10:06:05 mustang MailScanner[244953]: Using locktype = flock
> > Jul 29 10:06:08 mustang MailScanner[245441]: New Batch: Found 1634
> > messages
> > waiting
> > Jul 29 10:06:08 mustang MailScanner[245441]: New Batch: Scanning 100
> > messages, 2816396 bytes
> > Jul 29 10:06:08 mustang MailScanner[245441]: Spam Checks: Starting
> >
> > However, the messages are not getting delivers, so the queue.in is just
> > piling up!  Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
> I had similar results when the update scripts for either ClamAV or F-Prot
> (which I use)were unable to reach their respective sites.  When those
> scripts run MailScanner is stopped using a lockfile.  If they don't exit
> properly mail continues to be received in in.queue but MailScanner isn't
> available to process the mail and move it out for delivery.
>
> I modified my scripts with timeouts to prevent this.  I also noticed that
> I had a series of timeouts with F-Prot the other day when they were having
> problems with their site.
>
> Gerry