Question about batch sizes

[Ugo Bellavance]

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : S Joyce [mailto:sjlist at HEIDELBERG.EDU]
> Envoyé : Tuesday, March 16, 2004 3:23 PM
> À : MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Objet : Question about batch sizes
> 
> 
> Hello.  I am new to MailScanner, but it has been working very 
> well since I
> installed it last week.  Thanks to some help from folks on 
> the list, I was
> also able to fix a problem with my ClamAV configuration.
> 
> Now, I have a performance question.  My understanding is that each
> MailScanner process grabs a "batch" of incoming mail from the queue
> directory to process.  I see the 4 apparent options in 
> MailScanner.conf
> that control that processing:
> 
> >Max Unscanned Bytes Per Scan = 100000000
> >Max Unsafe Bytes Per Scan = 50000000
> >Max Unscanned Messages Per Scan = 30
> >Max Unsafe Messages Per Scan = 30
> 
> Now, if I understand that correctly, MailScanner will look 
> for viruses/spam
> in a batch of messages that is at most 50,000,000 bytes or 
> that consists of
> at most 30 messages.  (I don't think I have a configuration 
> that would keep
> any message from being scanned--I believe they all are).
> 
> When I pull out a section of the logs, I see numbers like this:
> 
> >Mar 16 15:14:37 nike MailScanner[4125]: Virus and Content 
> Scanning: Starting
> >Mar 16 15:14:37 nike MailScanner[5637]: New Batch: Found 8 
> messages waiting
> >Mar 16 15:14:37 nike MailScanner[5637]: New Batch: Scanning 
> 2 messages,
> >27107 bytes
> >Mar 16 15:14:38 nike MailScanner[4485]: New Batch: Found 9 
> messages waiting
> >Mar 16 15:14:38 nike MailScanner[4485]: New Batch: Scanning 
> 1 messages,
> >6594 bytes
> >Mar 16 15:14:38 nike MailScanner[6718]: Virus and Content 
> Scanning: Starting
> >Mar 16 15:14:39 nike MailScanner[4125]: Uninfected: 
> Delivered 1 messages
> >Mar 16 15:14:39 nike MailScanner[4125]: New Batch: Found 9 
> messages waiting
> >Mar 16 15:14:39 nike MailScanner[4125]: New Batch: Scanning 
> 1 messages,
> >10326 bytes
> >Mar 16 15:14:40 nike MailScanner[6718]: Uninfected: 
> Delivered 1 messages
> >Mar 16 15:14:45 nike MailScanner[6718]: New Batch: Found 10 
> messages waiting
> >Mar 16 15:14:45 nike MailScanner[6718]: New Batch: Scanning 
> 1 messages,
> >3233 bytes
> 
> My question is this--if a process, like 6718 above, finds 10 
> messages, is
> it right that it only scan 1 from that batch?  I'm just 
> wondering about
> efficiency.  

There are 10 messages in the queue, and probably 9 have been taken care of by other processes already, so he can only process 1.

> I am _not_ complaining about efficiency at all; 
> rather, I'm
> just trying to get a handle in my mind of how many messages 
> each process
> will grab in a batch.  (As a rule, very few messages in the 
> queue appear to
> be large.)
> 
> TIA for any response.
> SJ List
> sjlist at heidelberg.edu
>