Stuck in loop Expanding TNEF archive

[Brian Parish]

This morning I found postfix stuck in a loop, processing no mail with these 
messages in the log every few seconds:

Aug 26 06:35:09 boyac-server MailScanner[28213]: MailScanner E-Mail Virus 
Scanner version 4.44.6 starting...
Aug 26 06:35:09 : Read 204 hostnames from the phishing whitelist
Aug 26 06:35:09 : Using locktype = flock
Aug 26 06:35:10 : New Batch: Found 39 messages waiting
Aug 26 06:35:10 : New Batch: Scanning 30 messages, 4552291 bytes
Aug 26 06:35:11 : Expanding TNEF archive 
at /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming/28213/5E0C8F60D.3
A146/winmail.dat
Aug 26 06:35:20 : MailScanner E-Mail Virus Scanner version 4.44.6 starting...
Aug 26 06:35:21 : Read 204 hostnames from the phishing whitelist
Aug 26 06:35:21 : Using locktype = flock
Aug 26 06:35:21 : New Batch: Found 39 messages waiting
Aug 26 06:35:21 : New Batch: Scanning 30 messages, 4552291 bytes
Aug 26 06:35:24 : Expanding TNEF archive 
at /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming/28225/5E0C8F60D.D
3593/winmail.dat

Restarting didn't change anything.  In MailScanner.conf I changed:

TNEF Expander  = internal

to

TNEF Expander = /usr/bin/tnef --maxsize=10000000

Restarted and voila - all the mail zoomed through and it's been fine since.

Now the question is why?

cheers
Brian

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