[exim] Exim4 zombie processes are not killed

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Author: Alexander Nagel
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Exim4 zombie processes are not killed
Hello Eximusers,


i use exim on a heavlily loaded system, which receives up to 16.000 Mails (peak) in an hour (according to eximstats see below).
I have spamassassin and clamav included so the system scans all mails.

My problem is that i have quite a big number of exim4 process with state ZOMBIE during mail delivery.
Sometimes for any reason i dont know it happens that the ZOMBIE processes are not getting killed and they are getting more and more
until NAGIOS is alerting.

This is normal process list for one delivery:

root     16784  0.0  0.0  8536 2752 ?        S    15:27   0:00 /usr/sbin/exim4 -Mc 1JZRvR-0004MJ-0X
Debian-  16814  0.0  0.0  8536 2760 ?        S    15:27   0:00  \_ /usr/sbin/exim4 -Mc 1JZRvR-0004MJ-0X
Debian-  16815  0.0  0.0  8528 2372 ?        S    15:27   0:00      \_ /usr/sbin/exim4 -oMr spam-scanned -bS
Debian-  16816  0.0  0.0  8536 2756 ?        S    15:27   0:00      \_ /usr/sbin/exim4 -Mc 1JZRvR-0004MJ-0X
Debian-  16817  0.0  0.0  3264  768 ?        S    15:27   0:00      \_ /usr/bin/spamc -t 10 -u XXXXXXXXXX
Debian-  16818  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        Z    15:27   0:00      \_ [exim4] <defunct>


As long as spamc is running the one exim4 process is a ZOMBIE. When the spamc process is finished, the zombie process vanished too.
But as mentioned already this fails (once per week) and the zombie processes are hanging around :-)

The only solution is that I stop Exim4 and kill all exim4 processes with 'killall -9 exim4' and restart exim4.

configfile (spam part):

spamcheck:
driver = pipe
command = "/usr/sbin/exim4 -oMr spam-scanned -bS"
use_bsmtp = true
transport_filter = "/usr/bin/spamc -t 10 -u $local_part"
home_directory = "/tmp"
current_directory = "/tmp"
user = Debian-exim
group = Debian-exim
log_output = true
return_fail_output = true
return_path_add = false


The system is a debian 4.0 with exim4 (version: 4.63)

My question is: Is this a bug or is there an error in my config file?

If you need more infos please let know.
TIA

Alexander



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