Re: [Exim] so many exim processes that its killing the serve…

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Author: Phil Pennock
Date:  
To: Mikeb
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] so many exim processes that its killing the server
On 2000-10-26 at 22:46 -0700, Mikeb gifted us with:
> Our Apache Web Server keeps crashing due to exim.


So it's not accepting incoming mail, right? Is it listening on port 25?
$ netstat -anf | fgrep LISTEN
will list the TCP ports which are open for incoming connections.

Since it's a web-server which as you say isn't a mail-server, you don't
want incoming mail; you'll need to ensure that you're not running a
daemon ("exim -bd").

> When I do a "top" on the server, it shows about 400+ exim processes,
> which keeps putting the web server to a halt, and Apache can't serve up
> any pages. How can I stop this from happening. We don't have any mail
> server on the server it self. The only thing I can do it to reboot the
> server when it stops serving pages (about every 4 days) We only have 1
> domain on the server, for our users.


Go to <http://www.exim.org/>, click on "Documentation and FAQs" in the
frame on the left. Then, in the main panel, "The Exim Specification".

The is the full specification, and an excellent source of information.
Since you've ended up admin'ing the box, you'll want to refer to this
quite often.

"Introduction" and "How Exim delivers mail" will help you get acquainted
with the basics. Many of the following few sections are some that you
will need to refer to, for things like definitions of variables, etc.

See "Main configuration":
deliver_load_max
deliver_queue_load_max
queue_only
(and the following few options)
remote_max_parallel

Other points:

If you run "exim -bV" what version is reported?
If you run "exim -bpu" how much mail is there listed? That command will
list some queue ids - use some of those, together with "exim -Mvl", to
see what the delivery log is saying. Are most of the messages failing
for the same reason? If so, what's that reason?

> You'll have to pardon our ignorance, however we just lost our admin
> partners (2) in an auto accident, so I have been having to take a crash


:^(
--
Civilisation: where they cut down the trees and name streets after them.