MailScanner processes hangs with no reason (to me)

[Alessandro Bianchi]

Hi everyone

I'm facing a problem that drives me crazy.

I've been running MailScanner with Postfix (2.5.2 ath the moment) for a 
long time with no troubles, and have set up two new Fedora 9 servers 
using version 4.70.7.1

I'm using clamav (compiled by me) and spamassassin 3.2.5 (native Fedota 
RPM).

The MailScanner rules directory is a NFS mounted share (to share rules 
among several different installations)

With apparent no reason "sometimes" at random period MS just hangs

If I run MailScanner --lint or MailScanner --debug  using strace it 
shows that it just sists there and waits for another process

_llseek(4, 51712, [51712], SEEK_SET)    = 0
_llseek(4, 0, [51712], SEEK_CUR)        = 0
pipe([5, 6])                            = 0
clone(child_stack=0, 
flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD, 
child_tidptr=0xb80a4b38) = 25538
close(6)                                = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {SIG_IGN}, {SIG_DFL}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGQUIT, {SIG_IGN}, {SIG_DFL}, 8) = 0
waitpid(25538,

It remains in this state for a variable time from 1 minuto to hours.

When starting MailScanner it shows
26558 pts/2    S+     0:00 /bin/sh /sbin/service MailScanner start
26563 pts/2    S+     0:00 /bin/bash /etc/init.d/MailScanner start
26581 pts/2    S+     0:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/check_MailScanner
26594 pts/2    S+     0:03 /usr/bin/perl -I/usr/lib/MailScanner 
/usr/sbin/MailScanner /etc/MailScanner/MailScanner.conf
26595 pts/2    D+     0:02 /usr/bin/perl -I/usr/lib/MailScanner 
/usr/sbin/MailScanner --lintlite /etc/MailScanner/MailScanner.conf
26911 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep MailScanner

and it seems that the --lintlite is the process to be waited that takes 
sooooooo long to start and maybe hangs too

Doing a ps ax | grep MailScanner it shows the MailScanner processes in 
"starting child" state with no activity

This happens fron once a day to once every couple of days and it seems 
related to the restart MailScanner check script.

The only "non standard" piece of software I use is MailWatch.

Has anoyone any idea about what may I investigate to fix this?

Any idea is welcome

Thank you for your help

Alessandro Bianchi