OOM due to .xls files

[Robert Lopez]

Disclaimer: I am no Mailscanner expert...

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Ramiro Blanco <ramiblanco at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>  the last few days i've been having trouble with my mailscanner setup. The
> symptom was that mail was sucking on the hold queue so i proceeded to check:
>
> #MailScanner --debug
>
> In Debugging mode, not forking...
> Trying to setlogsock(unix)
> Building a message batch to scan...
> Have a batch of 10 messages.
> Out of memory!
>

We are running 3 gateways with MailScanner. I have seen that from time
to time, whereupon I begin looking and watching. Each time vmstat,
free, etc show memory is not at any crisis; no swapping problem. Each
time it has gone away on it's own.

>
> MailScanner -V showed nothing wierd, or at least no missing base module.
>
> Running 'strace MailScanner --debug' showed me that MailScanner got stuck
> everytime with the same file: somefile.xls right before the OOM
>
> Given the number of mails that was already on hold i proceeded to move that
> message of the way:
> #postsuper -H 6F8094AE271
>
> from that moment on, everything ran smoothly, at least until a day after
> when the same holding-mails-symptom and OOM appeared again, and  by running
> strace 'strace MailScanner --debug' i realized that the problem was, again,
> another .xls file.
> Care to note that both .xls files where < 40kb and free memory is not an
> issue on the server.
>
> Is this any known bug or something?

I have no idea if there is a known bug. At this college there are a
lot of .xls files mailed through our servers. I have not noticed any
of them getting stuck. So I do not there there is a problem with .xls
in general. There could be a problem with some instances possibly.

>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> --
> Ramiro Blanco
>
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-- 
Robert Lopez
Unix Systems Administrator
Central New Mexico Community College (CNM)
525 Buena Vista SE
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106