temporary file spawning

[Ade Fewings]

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-zip- && apologies for excessive headers.....(but, it was a long time
ago and may be needed for reminder services)......

>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We have two mail servers running on Solaris 9 Sparc.  Sendmail
>>>>>>> 8.12.10
>>>>>>> utilizing MailScanner 4.36.4 to call SpamAssassin 3.0.1.  Earlier
>>>>>>> today, one of our large mailing lists got hit a couple of times and
>>>>>>> the servers got a bit busy.  However, something went wrong and /tmp
>>>>>>> filled up with
>>>>>>> spamassassin.25755.Bdgxlb.tmp esque files.  Hundred of thousands
>>>>>>> were
>>>>>>> created in a short time, running /tmp out of i-nodes and thus
>>>>>>> effectively stopping MailScanner.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Killing MailScanner, cleaning /tmp and restarting would then
>>>>>>> reproduce
>>>>>>> the problem again soon after.  I truss'd the output of a few of the
>>>>>>> MailScanner processes that were going bad and all they were doing
>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>> trying to open new files in /tmp.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We have further discovered that this problem definitely only occurs
>>>>>> when
>>>>>> MailScanner is set to use SpamAssassin.  Switch off SpamAssassin and
>>>>>> there are zero problems.  So, being relatively unknowledgable about
>>>>>> MailScanner, the question that comes up is what is creating these
>>>>>> temporary files?  It is either SpamAssassin itself or something in
>>>>>> MailScanner that gets switched on when you tell it to use
>>>>>> SpamAssassin.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Can anybody offer any guidance on whether MailScanner itself creates
>>>>>> these files?
>>>>>
>>
>
> These files are generated by SpamAssassin and not MailScanner itself. So
> that is where you need to look. Check you are running a recent
> File::Temp module and that your Perl is new enough (I don't think
> SpamAssassin supports anything older than about 5.6.1).
>
> You can easily install a new perl from www.sunfreeware.com and then just
> mv /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl.SUN
> ln -s /usr/local/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl
> This will ensure that the new Perl is always used regardless of the
> $PATH.
>
> My own production MailScanner servers are mostly Solaris boxes and I
> have never seen this problem on there, so it's not a general problem.
> Let me know if the new perl helps.


Hi Julian et al,

An update on this situation.......

I thought i'd fixed the problem.  I updated MIME::Tools and File::Temp
with the existing perl 5.6.1 and all was well for the best part of two
weeks (during which we didn't have any massive influxs, but did have a
couple of inqueues up in the 100-200 mark) until  about 45 minutes ago
(Friday afternoon/evening.....grrr.......why send massive mailing list
mails at that time?!!), when one of the two affected servers exhibited
the problem again.  Both had inqueues up in the 600s, one survived and
got through it all ok, the other got down to 400 and then went bonkers.
So, my next step is a new Perl as Julian also suggested and i'll keep
the list informed as to the results of this.

Cheers
Ade

--
___________________________________________________
Ade Fewings MEng

School of Informatics, University of Wales, Bangor,
Dean Street, Bangor, Gwynedd. LL57 1UT. UK.

ade at informatics.bangor.ac.uk  www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/~ade
Tel: +44 (0)1248 382736       Fax: +44 (0)1248 361429
___________________________________________________


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