continued issue: queue gets backed up frequently

[Chris W. Parker]

Stephen Swaney <mailto:steve.swaney at FSL.COM>
    on Thursday, April 15, 2004 12:32 PM said:

> SpamAssassin can very network intensive. It does many RBL checks and
> if you have Razor, Pyzor and DCC installed and enabled, network
> congestion can slow it to a crawl, hence the SpamAssassin timeouts.
> This slows all email processing and results in spam slipping through
> on the timeouts.

ok now what i don't understand is why there is such a high load on the
computer during this clog time. today it happened again (but of course
it did, it's a monday!) and the average load time went up to about 7.

today i noticed it happening early on and went into MailScanner.conf and
disabled spamassassin. once i restarted MailScanner it started
processing mail immediately. since the backup job is still going i
reenabled spamassassin and the clog again, immediately started.

at the end of this email is my MailScanner.conf file (minus all comments
and commented commands). maybe there is something in there that can be
changed to better optimize MS?

> Best solution is to get your email processing on a separate LAN
> segment /Ethernet port from the backup.

disclaimer: i'm not terribly familiar with networking and networking
lingo so please bear with me while i stumble through the following:

at this point everything (all workstations and servers) are on the same
subnet. i have two managed switches. without going too detailed (since
that would be OT) can i use those switches to create a separate LAN (i
think this is a VLAN)? would that solve my problem?



thanks,
chris.

p.s. here is my MailScanner.conf file:

Max Children = 1
Run As User =
Run As Group =
Queue Scan Interval = 15
Incoming Queue Dir = /var/spool/mqueue.in
Outgoing Queue Dir = /var/spool/mqueue
Incoming Work Dir = /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming
Quarantine Dir = /var/spool/MailScanner/quarantine
PID file = /var/run/MailScanner.pid
Restart Every = 14400
MTA = sendmail
Sendmail = /usr/sbin/sendmail
Sendmail2 = /usr/sbin/sendmail
Max Unscanned Bytes Per Scan = 100000000
Max Unsafe Bytes Per Scan = 50000000
Max Unscanned Messages Per Scan = 100
Max Unsafe Messages Per Scan = 100
Expand TNEF = yes
Deliver Unparsable TNEF = no
TNEF Expander = /usr/bin/tnef --maxsize=100000000
TNEF Timeout = 120
Virus Scanning = yes
Virus Scanners = none
Virus Scanner Timeout = 300
Deliver Disinfected Files = yes
Silent Viruses = Klez Yaha-E Bugbear Braid-A WinEvar
Still Deliver Silent Viruses = no
Block Encrypted Messages = no
Block Unencrypted Messages = no
Allowed Sophos Error Messages =
Sophos IDE Dir = /usr/local/Sophos/ide
Sophos Lib Dir = /usr/local/Sophos/lib
Allow Partial Messages = no
Allow External Message Bodies = no
Allow IFrame Tags = no
Log IFrame Tags = no
Allow Object Codebase Tags = no
Convert Dangerous HTML To Text = yes
Convert HTML To Text = no
Filename Rules = /etc/MailScanner/filename.rules.conf
Quarantine Infections = no
Quarantine Whole Message = no
Quarantine Whole Messages As Queue Files = no
Language Strings = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/languages.conf
Deleted Bad Filename Message Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/deleted.filename.message.txt
Deleted Virus Message Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/deleted.virus.message.txt
Stored Bad Filename Message Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/stored.filename.message.txt
Stored Virus Message Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/stored.virus.message.txt
Disinfected Report = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/disinfected.report.txt
Inline HTML Signature = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/inline.sig.html
Inline Text Signature = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/inline.sig.txt
Inline HTML Warning = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/inline.warning.html
Inline Text Warning = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/inline.warning.txt
Sender Error Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/sender.error.report.txt
Sender Bad Filename Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/sender.filename.report.txt
Sender Virus Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/sender.virus.report.txt
Hide Incoming Work Dir = yes
Include Scanner Name In Reports = no
Mail Header = X-MailScanner(filter):
Spam Header = X-MailScanner-SpamCheck:
Spam Score Header = X-MailScanner-SpamScore:
Information Header = X-MailScanner-Information:
Spam Score Character = s
Clean Header Value       = Found to be clean
Infected Header Value    = Found to be infected
Disinfected Header Value = Disinfected
Detailed Spam Report = yes
Multiple Headers = append
Hostname = the MailScanner
Sign Messages Already Processed = no
Sign Clean Messages = no
Mark Infected Messages = yes
Mark Unscanned Messages = yes
Unscanned Header Value = Not scanned: please contact
webmaster at swatgear.com for details
Deliver Cleaned Messages = no
Notify Senders = no
Never Notify Senders Of Precedence = list bulk
Scanned Modify Subject = no # end
Scanned Subject Text = {Scanned}
Virus Modify Subject = yes
Virus Subject Text = {Virus?}
Filename Modify Subject = yes
Filename Subject Text = {Filename?}
Spam Modify Subject = yes
Spam Subject Text = {Spam?}
High Scoring Spam Modify Subject = yes
High Scoring Spam Subject Text = {Spam!}
Warning Is Attachment = yes
Attachment Warning Filename = VirusWarning.txt
Attachment Encoding Charset = us-ascii
Archive Mail =
Send Notices = no
Notices Include Full Headers = no
Hide Incoming Work Dir in Notices = no
Notice Signature = -- \nMailScanner\nEmail Virus
Scanner\nwww.mailscanner.info
Notices From = MailScanner
Notices To = postmaster
Local Postmaster = postmaster
Spam List Definitions = /etc/MailScanner/spam.lists.conf
Virus Scanner Definitions = /etc/MailScanner/virus.scanners.conf
Spam Checks = yes
Spam Domain List =
Spam List Timeout = 10
Max Spam List Timeouts = 4
Is Definitely Not Spam = /etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.whitelist.rules
Is Definitely Spam = /etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.blacklist.rules
Use SpamAssassin = no
Max SpamAssassin Size = 90000
Required SpamAssassin Score = 4
High SpamAssassin Score = 8
SpamAssassin Auto Whitelist = no
SpamAssassin Prefs File = /etc/MailScanner/spam.assassin.prefs.conf
SpamAssassin Timeout = 60 # used to be 40
Max SpamAssassin Timeouts = 20
Check SpamAssassin If On Spam List = no
Always Include SpamAssassin Report = yes
Spam Score = yes
Spam Actions = deliver
High Scoring Spam Actions = delete
Sender Spam Report = /etc/MailScanner/reports/en/sender.spam.report.txt
Sender Spam List Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/sender.spam.rbl.report.txt
Sender SpamAssassin Report =
/etc/MailScanner/reports/en/sender.spam.sa.report.txt
Syslog Facility = mail
Log Spam = yes
Log Permitted Filenames = no
SpamAssassin User State Dir =
SpamAssassin Install Prefix =
SpamAssassin Local Rules Dir =
SpamAssassin Default Rules Dir =
Debug = no
Debug SpamAssassin = no
Always Looked Up Last = no
Deliver In Background = yes
Delivery Method = batch
Split Exim Spool = no
Lockfile Dir = /tmp
Minimum Code Status = supported