Re: [exim] SA causing Exim 421 timeout/frozen messages

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:12:58 -0500
"Bradley Walker" <bawalker@???> wrote:

> This is an error that happens when I have the issue of Exim and
> SpamAssassin running.
[snip]
> 2006-02-27 23:06:42 1FDw3S-0004Tw-Cp ** dottie@<removed>.com
> F=<eBay.125072493.62196.0@???> R=spamcheck_director
> T=spamcheck: Child process of spamcheck transport returned 2 from
> command: /usr/sbin/exim (preceded by transport filter timeout while
> writing to pipe)

Superficially that just looks like a SpamAssassin timeout, in which
case I'd say you need to optimise your SA setup or something. However,
you said your system is lightly loaded so that's weird.

Whilst this isn't really addressing your actual problem, you could/
should consider switching to use Exim's built-in content scanning
extensions if you can and do spam scanning at SMTP time. The
"communication" path between Exim and SpamAssassin is simpler then, and
there's less to go wrong. Additionally, at a quick glance, it looks
like your current setup (when it works) is probably bouncing detected
spam to the "senders", which is a Bad Thing to do, because it burdens
unrelated third parties with your rejected spam. Rejecting stuff at
SMTP time (rather than accepting the message and running it through SA
at a later point in time, as you're currently doing) is a good idea if
you can do it.

Tim