[exim] Crashing Exim -> log storm

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Author: Martijn Grendelman
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Crashing Exim -> log storm
Hi,

Today I had some problems with Exim 4.63 crashing:

T=remote_smtp defer (-1): smtp transport process returned non-zero
status 0x000b: terminated by signal 11

I have not found the cause of the problem, but it went away (or so it
seems) after I upgraded my Debian packages to the latest available (same
Exim version, though) and I cleaned out spool and database directory.

However, the crashes had some nasty side effects. The following lines
were logged to both the mainlog and the paniclog:

2007-05-04 09:36:55 1Hjs8r-0003G0-6j remote delivery process count got
out of step
2007-05-04 09:36:55 1Hjs8r-0003G3-C3 remote delivery process count got
out of step

I understand that this is the result of a crashing child process. The
problem is the blazing speed with which this is written to the logs:

# grep '2007-05-04 09:23:51' paniclog | wc -l
27887

# grep '2007-05-04 09:36:55' mainlog | wc -l
32082

A total of 60000 lines per second! Is this expected behaviour?

Best regards,

Martijn Grendelman