Weird Problem with MailScanner

[UxBoD]

Was there anything in /var/log/messages that showed a problem ?
How many MS child processes were set to run ?
Even with very little memory it should at least process some emails.  What RBLs were you checking against ? Quite are few are no longer running so if you are trying to query them you will get a very long wait and timeouts which maybe where the problem is.

IMHO you could try removing the RBL list from your MailScanner.conf so at least virri scanning is still performed, and see if that makes a difference.

We really need to see the following :-

1) Number of MS child processes set to spawn
2) MS run in debug mode
3) A lint of your SA configuration
4) ps ef | grep MailScanner when the problem is occuring

Hope we can help you.

Regards,

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Damian Rivas" <damian at cht.com.ar>
To: "MailScanner discussion" <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 4:37:35 PM (GMT) Africa/Casablanca
Subject: RE: Weird Problem with MailScanner


Mensaje 
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. 





-----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! 



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