identical messages -- some get bayes score, some don't

Cannon Watts cwatts at elsberry.k12.mo.us
Fri Jan 9 03:22:59 GMT 2009


I've just set up a new mail server, running MailScanner with sendmail, and
am seeing a large percentage of mails that don't get a bayes score.  I
understand (I think) that unlike earlier versions, it's normal for some
messages not to get a bayse score.  However, this is approaching 50
percent, and, with identical messages, one will get a bayes score while
the other doesn't.  I don't see any indication of timeouts in the logs,
and I have 'Wait During Bayes Rebuild = yes' in MailScanner.conf as was
suggested in a similar discussion I found.

At one point today we received 28 messages that were identical other than
recipient.  The first 5 didn't receive a bayes score.  The 6th was scored
BAYES_50.  Copies 7 and 8 didn't recieve a bayes score, and the 9th copy
scored BAYES_60.  The final 19 copies did not receive a bayes score.

All of the other SpamAssassin scores are identical for all 28 messages.
Any help understanding what is going on here would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cannon Watts


System spec's:
MailScanner 4.73.4
SpamAssassin 3.2.5
Perl 5.10.0
Sendmail 8.14.2
Fedora 9, kernel 2.6.25 x86_64
Quad-Core Opteron 2350
4 GB RAM



ADDITIONAL INFO

I decided to try something else before hitting 'send' -- saved all 28
messages to a new mailbox, and deleted the SpamAssassin headers.
I then ran
'spamassassin -D -p /etc/MailScanner/spam.assassin.prefs.comf --mbox spams'
Looking through the output, this time it scored 8 of the messages BAYES_50,
6 of the messages BAYES_60, and the other 14 did not get a bayes score.
More importantly, I'm seeing a bunch of timeouts in the debug information.
Way too much to include here, but I'm seeing hundreds of lines like these:

[2456] dbg: async: starting: URI-DNSBL,
DNSBL:dob.sibl.support-intelligence.net:agentbenefitsteam.com
(timeout 10.0s, min 2.0s)

[2456] dbg: async: starting: URI-NS,
NS:agentbenefitsteam.com
(timeout 10.0s, min 2.0s)

[2456] dbg: async: starting: DNSBL-A,
dns:A:154.248.19.72.plus.bondedsender.org.
(timeout 10.0s, min 2.0s)

[2456] dbg: async: starting: DNSBL-TXT,
dns:TXT:154.248.19.72.bl.spamcop.net.
(timeout 10.0s, min 2.0s)


And perhaps most importantly:
[2456] dbg: locker: safe_lock: trying to get lock on
/etc/MailScanner/bayes/bayes with 10 timeout


What can I do to cure all these timeouts (and will fixing the timeouts
solve my bayes problems)?

Thanks again,
Cannon





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