MailScanner running very slow

Thu Aug 14 08:59:02 IST 2008

Hi

Well mailscanner is doing it's job nice and quickly...but the outgoing MTA isn't.

Would be nice to know versions of the MTA, MailScanner and the O/S.

Given you're only processing 2,000 messages (you don't mention size, but the logs are clearing the email quickly) the system does seem unusually busy for this small number of messages. Have you got anything else running on the host?

This looks like a sendmail issue. There's a setting in sendmail that stops it working is the system is too busy.

--
Martin Hepworth
Snr Systems Administrator
Solid State Logic
Tel: +44 (0)1865 842300

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf
> Of Nasser Al-Zawawi
> Sent: 13 August 2008 19:41
> To: mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
> Subject: MailScanner running very slow
>
> Hi,
> I have a Dell PowerEdge server 2950 with 2 Dual Core Xeon
> processors 3.0GHz with 2GB RAM running RedHat ES 4.  The MTA
> is sendmail and I am using the latest MailScanner version
> (4.70.7-1).  The system processes about 2,000 emails per day
> and about half of it are spam.  See the following:
> #---------------
> MailScanner Status:
>       1920 messages Scanned by MailScanner
>       73657132 Total Bytes
>       1122 Spam messages detected by MailScanner
>       6 Viruses found by MailScanner
>       935 Messages delivered by MailScanner
> #---------------
>
> The mail delivery is very slow.  Some time it takes 2 hrs
> before it gets delivered.  I tried the tips under
> http://wiki.mailscanner.info/doku.php?id=documentation:tweakin
g:some_things_to_try_if_your_incoming_queue_is_running_slow but > they did not help.  The mail keeps accumulating under
> /var/spool/mqueue.in while all the MailScanner processors are
> running at 100% CPU.  Then all the sudden (after 1-2 hours)
> it starts delivering the emails and the /var/spool/mqueue.in
> files go down to 0.
> I monitored the system today; the system stopped delivering
> emails between 9:12AM till 11:35AM.  During that time, top
> showed something like this:
> #----------------
> top - 10:46:26 up 3 days,  7:42,  1 user,  load average:
> 5.81, 6.09, 5.48
> Tasks: 233 total,   5 running, 226 sleeping,   0 stopped,   2 zombie
> Cpu(s): 59.0% us,  1.2% sy,  0.0% ni, 39.5% id,  0.2% wa,
> 0.0% hi,  0.0% si
> Mem:   2074600k total,  1735692k used,   338908k free,
> 22524k buffers
> Swap:  2097144k total,   356516k used,  1740628k free,
> 532576k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  2752 root      25   0 85572  75m 2964 R  100  3.7  35:54.85
> MailScanner
>  2880 root      25   0 85572  75m 2956 R  100  3.7  35:50.35
> MailScanner
>  3024 root      25   0 85572  75m 2956 R  100  3.7  35:41.62
> MailScanner
>  2949 root      25   0 85572  75m 2956 R  100  3.7  35:47.07
> MailScanner
> 11393 apache    15   0 26360 9736 3648 S    5  0.5   0:57.14 httpd
> 11394 apache    15   0 26576 9936 3616 S    5  0.5   0:58.83 httpd
> 26598 root      16   0  4760 2568 1648 S    1  0.1   0:00.20 ssh
> #----------------
>
> and the /var/spool/mqueue.in continued to accumulate files
> till it reached 489 messages, then within 5 minutes it
> delivered all the messages!
>
> This cycles continues all day long, where the emails are
> withheld for 1 to 2 hours and then the get delivered in one big burst.
>
> Here are snippets of the log for that period with "Log Speed = yes":
>
> grep ": Batch" /var/log/maillog
> #-----------
> Aug 13 09:12:16 samba MailScanner[5852]: Batch completed at
> 1844 bytes per second (39583 / 21) Aug 13 09:12:16 samba
> MailScanner[5852]: Batch (2 messages) processed in 21.46
> seconds Aug 13 09:12:42 samba MailScanner[6013]: Batch
> completed at 3752 bytes per second (9167 / 2) ... Aug 13
> 11:28:55 samba MailScanner[2949]: Batch (10 messages)
> processed in 24.54 seconds Aug 13 11:28:55 samba
> MailScanner[3024]: Batch completed at 657 bytes per second
> (3825 / 5) Aug 13 11:28:55 samba MailScanner[3024]: Batch (1
> message) processed in 5.82 seconds
> #-----------
> I would appreciate any clues on resolving this issue.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Nasser
>

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