Unusual # of MailScanner processes running

[Kevin Spicer]

On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 17:31, Jason Burzenski wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am monitoring an unusual situation on one of two identical MS
> boxes.  Both boxes are RH9, running MS 4.29.7 (upgraded on 4/3/04).
> These boxes have been running with symetric configurations for over
> 200 days without as much as a hiccup.
>
> Starting at 12:30PM yesterday (4/15), one of the two boxes started
> running a higher than usual number of MS processes.  I noticed the
> issue from mailscanner-mrtg which has shown almost a flatline for # of
> MS copies running since the box was turned up (normally run 10
> copies).  Starting at 12:30PM, the graph bounces between 10 and 18
> copies continuously (producing a much ulglier graph).  I have
> confirmed these are actual copies and not a script with a similar name
> that is being picked up by msmrtg.

It is normal for MailScanner processes to spawn children to handle
certain tasks (particularly calling external programs), therefore this
is probably no cause for alarm.  It may well be that something is
causing these external processes to take longer on one machine (network
timeouts, poorly performing virus scanners [read sophos!] etc.) and this
is causing these processes to take longer to complete, thus meaning more
of them are running concurrently.




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