Upgrade to 4.26.8 and performance bottlenecks

[Martin Hepworth]

Michael Dahlberg wrote:
> I recently upgraded our mail system from MailScanner 4.13 to 4.26.8
> in order to correct a problem scanning messages with MyDoom-infected
> attachments.  Certain messages would contain data that some MUAs would
> not interpret as an attachment, while others would.  This data contained
> an encoded version of the MyDoom virus.  MailScanner 4.13 would not detect
> the virus-infected attachment while 4.26.8 would.
>
> I am using Sophos 3.78(d) as the virus scanner
> (virus scanner = sophossavi).  I do no spam analysis through
> MailScanner, I don't have MailScanner look analyze attachments for
> file type, and I don't block messages based on HTML tags.  I am
> running MailScanner on a Sun Solaris dual SPARC II system with
> 2GB RAM.
>
> My problem is that MailScanner 4.26.8 is SO SLOW that it can't keep
> up with our mail flow (virus scanning speeds are between 1 - 3 kB/sec).
> The problem is with MailScanner, since a
> downgrade (which retains the same Sophos installation) to 4.13 returns
> virus scanning back to its normal speed.  When we're not hit with
> a virus outbreak we process 200,000 - 400,000 emails per day.
>
> Has anyone observed this behavior? Can anyone offer a suggestion on
> what I might try tuning to recover adequate performance?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
Mike

I'd make sure that all the required perl Modules are loaded (via CPAN is
the best way), and these may have changed for 4.26 from 4.13.

Also is there any indication of problems if you set Debug=yes in the
MailScanner.conf and run MailScanner via check_MailScanner.

--
Martin Hepworth
Snr Systems Administrator
Solid State Logic
Tel: +44 (0)1865 842300

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