That's ok, I'm still in the process of learning these massive amounts of
innerworkings of linux programs to such a fine detail. Again it's quite
difficult at times to balance server tech work with customers and clients
wanting networking/engineering solutions done for their business. I've had
years and years of linux experience, just not with some or all of the
software I'm working with now. So in the case where I ask and ask a lot of
questions, I do so to absorb as much information as possible from others who
have a hands on experience with it. I learn best that way. However it
seems like I've been bounced back and forth from the SA list to the Exim
list and back again with some on both lists suggesting it's the others
fault.
I have been asking a lot about this problem mainly in the context that
customers and clients are coming at me (somedays feeling like they are going
for my jugluar) because one client wants indepth spam filtering, but if I do
that, it trashes/freezes email messages for another customer. Then that
other customer comes back getting all upset for not understanding why their
astrological joke email for the day hasn't arrived. I say that in jest, but
several clients do have important emails coming through daily. For me,
resolving this issue has become top priority before taking on some future
website related upgrades.
Anyway onto the technical aspects...
- I agree with you in that 5m is way too long for a dual P3 933 with 1gb of
ram server to handle. The server loads throughout the day average around
0.01/0.01/0.01 with brief periodic spikes as I'm doing maintanence. I have
a module in WebMin that will actually give me stats for Exim and 93.5% of
all messages (965 messages in the last three days) were processed in under
1m. Only a total of 67 messages were spent in queue for processing in the
10-15min time range. Obviously the server is handling the amount of emails
just fine. As a note, the 965 messages was a combination of when SA was
running and not running. However the 67 messages can be attributed to when
SA was running.
- In regards to the rulesets, this is where I'm quite a bit unfamiliar about
what truly is best. On one side I've been taught that the more stringent
filters/tests and more filters/test you have, the better the spamblocking.
Obviously that does take system resources, but I'm unsure of how much
resources it truly does take. For what it's worth, I spent time going back
over the headers of emails that I have received that had been filtered with
SA, and here is what I saw in regards to what rulesets are being run:
X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.1 (2006-03-10) on
stargatesg1.modemnet.net
X-Spam-Level: ***
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=3.8 required=3.5
tests=DNS_FROM_RFC_WHOIS,HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_24,HTML_MESSAGE,
HTML_SHORT_LINK_IMG_3,MIME_HTML_ONLY,MIME_HTML_ONLY_MULTI,MPART_ALT_DIFF,SPF
_FAIL
autolearn=no version=3.1.1
Obviously since this is the Exim list, most people on here won't care or
know about which or what rulesets to run or not to run. Or even how to
disable them. So I'll post the above for what it's worth anyway.
Brad
-----Original Message-----
From: Jakob Hirsch [
mailto:jh@plonk.de]
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 7:21 PM
To: bawalker@???
Cc: exim-users@???
Subject: Re: [exim] Exim timeout?
Bradley Walker wrote:
> I didn't ignore your first message, in fact I read it, have it
> archived in a folder here to continue to try and discern helpful
> information from. Being I'm working 14-17 hours a day as a business
> owner, replies sometimes can't always come in due time.
Sorry if I seemed rude, but the only thing that can be seen is you
constantly asking about this problem, without giving feedback.
> appropriately. However the system itself is not under a stressful
> load at this point. Load averages throughout the day sometimes can
> even be 0.0/0.0/0.0 while email is continually being processed.
It's still strange that 5 minutes is not enough for SA to process a single
message. This is usually a sign of an overloaded system or very heave
rulesets. What's your hardware and mail volume?
btw, if you don't need user-specific rulesets and bayes-db, you should
switch to content scanning at ACL time. It's less complex, more stable and
lowers system load.
And if you trust your users a little bit (after all, you have a contract),
you can exclude authenticated senders from spam scanning.
> Several people on the SpamAssassin list have commented that the spamc
> child process has been terminated created the error that I orginially
posted.
That may be true, but 5 minutes should be really enough for SA to scan a
message.
