SpamAssassin timed out and was killed... box too slow?

[mikea]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 12:59:20PM -0700, Chris W. Parker wrote:
> Hello.

> We have relatively low email traffic (approx. 450/day on work days)
> and I receive quite a few of these in my /^/> /var/log/maillog:

> May 17 04:03:08 filter MailScanner[3324]: SpamAssassin timed out and
> was killed, consecutive failure 1 of 20

> Does this mean my computer is too slow? It's a 200mhz pentium!!! :)
> I can imagine that it IS too slow, but I just want to make sure it's
> not a configuration problem. Do you think increasing the timeout
> would help or would that make it worse?

It more probably means that sometimes the first attempt to check
some IP address or machine name in a DNSbl is timing out. If you
see things like

: consecutive failure 1 of 20
: consecutive failure 2 of 20
: consecutive failure 3 of 20
: consecutive failure 4 of 20
: ...
: consecutive failure 20 of 20

then you have a problem and need to fix it.

If the box isn't keeping up with incoming mail, than that can be
a problem, too, and you may want to review your DNSbl configuration.

But it you're just seeing the occasional "failure 1 of 20" and the
box is keepnig up, things probably are OK.

As to box speed, that's not really a consideration: my 233 MHz P-III
keeps up nicely with about about 6K inbound mails each workday, of
which about 20 to 25% are spam on any given workday.

it's memory size that's the worst constraint, with swap device speed
being next in my experience. CPU speed is way down on the list.

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