Very large queue and very long delays

[Ramon Acedo]

Hi,

I'm using mailscanner 4.24-5 in debian woody with sendmail 8.12.3 and
kernel 2.4.22.

Almost everyday my mqueue.in grows up to 2000 emails pending to be
delivered (or queued at mqueue directory) and the delay of some mails
reaches 3 hours!

The mqueue directory has always about 200 mails pending what is reasonble.

I've tried to decrease the Queue Scan Interval to 2, to increase the
Max Children to 10 (I've got a 2,4 PIV with 1GB of RAM) and to try
Delivery Method to queue and to batch (without any differences). The load
is never over 0.7 (maybe more just when MS starts).

I have disabled the RBL checks setting "Spam List = " and setting
skip_rbl_checks 1 in /opt/MailScanner/etc/spam.assassin.prefs.conf
and I have enabled my sendmail to check the relays.ordb.org though
MS keeps logging lots of "SpamAssassin timed out and was killed."

MS seems to not to change its behaviour processing the queue and after
some hours after when the number of mails per hour decreases from
about 3000 to about 600 the queue keeps growing and growing.

Doew anyone any ideas?

Thanks!

Ramon Acedo