Weird Problem with MailScanner

[Damian Rivas]

Yeah, I was thinking in upgrading the hardware, but for me that means:
installing an entirely new server. But I wanted to know if it can be a
software error to fix the problem at least temporarily to give me time
to install the new and upgraded server.
 
Thanks for the data on memory minimun recommendation Gareth. 
 
 
<http://www.cht.com.ar/> 
-----Mensaje original-----
De: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
[mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] En nombre de Gareth
Enviado el: viernes, 19 de octubre de 2007 13:32
Para: MailScanner discussion
Asunto: RE: Weird Problem with MailScanner



	I would say it is seriously in need of a memory upgrade. The
minimum recomendation is 1GB.

		-----Original Message-----
		From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
[mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info]On Behalf Of Damian
Rivas
		Sent: 19 October 2007 17:22
		To: mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
		Subject: Weird Problem with MailScanner
		
		
		Hi there, I'm having a really weird problem and as I am
a n00b it gets a bit more difficult to find a solution. 
		 
		I'll explain the details first:
		 
		Since 6 months ago, I am the System Administrator of a
Tourism Agency. We use an E-mail Scanner in a server with the following
characteristics:
		 
		Processor: Pentium II 233 Mhz.
		RAM: 128 MB
		OS: Linux Slackware 9
		MailScanner version: 4.55.10
		 
		This E-mail Scanner use the MailScanner with Sophos
Antivirus and Spam Assasin to filter spam and scan incoming and
outcoming mails for viruses which are then redirected to an internal MS
Exchange Server or to the Internet, respectively by sendmail.
		 
		One month ago, the server started behaving erratically.
Instead of checking and sending mails as it normally did, it started
queueing mails massively and therefore accumulating great quantities of
them, it got up to 10000 mails queued up in a single day, therefore, no
one recieved a single mail. After many pointless attempts to repair this
problem and seeing that the Travel Agents were getting a bit mad, I
decided to redirect the MX server of our domains in the DNS to the
firewall, so that our E-Mail Scanner server didn't recieve more mail,
which was only going to contribute to making the problem worse, more
incoming mails, more queued mails.
		 
		With this, the server started sending the queued mails
and mail traffic was restored with the difference that mails weren't
scanned at all(they were no longer passing through the MailScanner
Server). When the mail queues were empty again, I tried to reestablish
the scanning service, but the problem appeared again.
		 
		I don't have a clear idea of what can be causing this
problem. The machine is pretty old, but the former administrator told me
that it had never had problems. I think that perhaps we are being Spam
Bombed and perhaps the System poor processing capabilities cannot
resists the increasing traffic and therefore it gets stuck and keeps
enqueueing mails.
		 
		Please if anyone can guide me I'll appreciate it,
		Sorry if my English is a bit rusty, it is not my native
language, therefore if you need me to be more clear or try to give more
details of something, don't hesitate to ask so.
		Thanks in advance!
		
		<http://www.cht.com.ar/> 

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