exim on SPARC2 with load > 30

Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Alan Thew
Date:  
To: Exim List
Subject: exim on SPARC2 with load > 30
One of our exim boxes running 1.61 with solaris 2.5.1 showed very high
sustained load averages this afternoon, a large number of running exim
processes were responsible.

Here is a relevant section of my configure file:

remote_sort = "*.liv.ac.uk:*.uk"
smtp_accept_max=30
queue_run_max = 6
queue_only_load = 8.0

I realise that the above figures could lead to 36+1 exims running potentially
and I've been too generous. Given that the machine handles 50K items
per day what do others feel is a sensible figure given that this is taking
mail from PCs and it's prime job is to just accept the mail, delivery
is less important?
How expensive is a queue only exim? Is sorting, which I really like, too
expensive in some cases?

Thanks.


--
Alan Thew                                       alan.thew@???
Computing Services,University of Liverpool      Fax: +44 151 794-4442