Debug on a production server

[Scott Silva]

on 10/11/2007 12:02 PM Mikael Syska spake the following:
> Ugo Bellavance wrote:
>> Mikael Syska wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>>> There does not seem to be much info on this ... and my scan times 
>>>>> are also rather high ... not that its a problem atm ... but it 
>>>>> could be in the future :-(
>>>>
>>>> Please provide more information:
>>>>
>>>> Hardware
>>> OS: FreeBSD 7 ( yes its current, but 6.4 did not perform very disk 
>>> with the SAS 5iR controller
>>> 2GB ram
>>> Dual Core Intel Xeon 3060 2.40 Ghz
>>>> # of child processes
>>> 8
>>>> scan times of full batches.
>>> Oct 11 18:48:58 spam02 MailScanner[72858]: Batch (15 messages) 
>>> processed in 89.57 seconds
>>> Oct 11 18:49:08 spam02 MailScanner[72872]: Batch (15 messages) 
>>> processed in 88.72 seconds
>>> Oct 11 18:49:10 spam02 MailScanner[72854]: Batch (15 messages) 
>>> processed in 106.89 seconds
>>> Oct 11 18:49:19 spam02 MailScanner[72865]: Batch (15 messages) 
>>> processed in 105.85 seconds
>>
>> Looks fine.  Is there a reason why you use 15 message batches?
> you mean instead of 30 ....
> 
> Some performance turning I read on the wiki ... but t does not seem to 
> have any effect on my system ... so it will do up to deafult again.
>>
>>>> Using RBLs at MTA
>>> nope ... we have had very bad exprerience with that ... both tried 
>>> spamcop and spamhaus ... both have to many FP here in denmark ....
>>
>> Spamcop is FP-prone, but I've never heard of a FP in north america for 
>> spamhaus.
> Then you are a lucky man ...
> 
> since the server aint that overloaded I dont see any reason to risk 
> getting any FP ...
>>
>>> Its not a problem that I takes so long time .. just saw the message 
>>> about the patch and wandered if that would make a diff on my scan 
>>> times ...
>>
>> Ok, I doubt so. Did you put the MailScanner working dir and /tmp in 
>> memory (tmpfs on linux)?
> no ... its on the disk ... and since every mail could be far too 
> important I dont intend to use it ....
Tmpfs is absolutely safe on mailscanner if you follow the wiki and only put 
the mailscanner incoming directory there. And the speed increase is very 
noticeable, especially in virus and spam scanning.
Mailscanner does not actually remove any messages. It sees the message in 
mqueue.in, extracts it to incoming, does its work, and if messages are clean 
it hard links it to mqueue and then unlinks from mqueue.in. So there is no 
chance of mailscanner losing a message. If it dies at any point up to the 
unlink, the original message is in mqueue.in waiting to be processed again.

It is a marvelously thought out system, and I have to say that Julian is 
brilliant.


-- 
MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!