MS killing CPU

[Alex Neuman van der Hans]

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Perhaps you're using the wrong set of rules? Look for "bigevil" in the 
archives and you'll find a lot of discussions about it.

Another issue can be the fact that you're starting more than one 
MailScanner child. You probably have it at the default (5). It's 
something I've noticed a while back - it really helps to tune this. Too 
few children, and your mail queue becomes huge, or messages take forever 
to get to recipients. Too many children, and you overwhelm your 
cpu/ram/resources. Some clients I have work wonderfully well on an 
underpowered Celeron 2.0 w/256MB of RAM (even using clamavmodule, SA 
with Bayes/Razor/Pyzor/DCC/RBL's) because their message volume is low 
enough to use only 1 child. I have clients with dual Xeons and 2GB RAM 
with thousands of messages per day that work equally well with children 
set to 10 or 20. The time between you hitting "send" and them getting 
their e-mail when they hit "Send+Receive" is usually under 30 seconds, 
in clients both big and small.

Try disabling SpamAssassin temporarily - or exaggerate and turn off 
everything and then turn it back on one by one - first AV, then Spam 
Checking through RBL's in MS if you have it, and then SpamAssassin.

MS is not complicated - but it *is* complex; it's made up of several 
parts. When any of those parts break, you get to keep both pieces ;)

Cheers,

Alex

Philip Waters wrote:
> There has to be more that you can do to keep the processor from going to
> 100 % Adding and adding hardware can't be the only answer because it
> just gives spammers more power to spam. Where email everywhere is free
> we can't keep upgrading and adding servers once the machine gets
> processor bound.
> 
> What are other people doing?
> 
> If you want to derail as a CTO, just make the CEO feel like a ninny. -- 
> Ted "Dililies" Sept 6, 2004 InfoWorld, pg 12
>    _
>   °v°  There's no place like root#cd ~/
>  /(_)\
>   ^ ^
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ugo Bellavance" <ugob at CAMO-ROUTE.COM>
> To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 2:36 PM
> Subject: Re: MS killing CPU
> 
> 
> 
>>Hendrik den Hartog wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Recently our MS machine has been grinding to a halt. You can't
>>>'get' to it, won't respond to pings etc. These periods have lasted
>>>several hours. In the past,it has eventually been 'springing' back
>>>to life of its own accord, allowing me to get a quick look. TOP
>>>showed occassionally a MS child hogging 100% CPU. Also we've had
>>>some SA timeouts recently.
>>
>>100% cpu for MS child is normal, as long as it doesn't stay like that
>>forever.
>>
>>Ugo
>>
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> 
> 
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