[Mailman-Users] Spikes in mailman queue

[Fletcher Cocquyt]

In the last 3-4 weeks I have observed 4-5 occasions were the mailman
qfiles/in dir suddenly gets bottlenecked (by mostly spam) ­ seemingly
waiting on spamassassin.
I look at the syslog and it shows its processing 1 email every 10-20 seconds
­ I¹ve done some tuning already (local DNS caching server, Razor timeouts
lowered etc) - can anyone offer some advice on how to prevent this?  The
workaround currently is to stop/start SA (but then all the spam ends up in
the moderator's queue) - thanks for any tips

god at smtp-02:~ 3:01pm 52 # ps -ef | grep spam
    root 22276 22109   0 15:02:52 pts/1       0:00 grep spam
    root  7243     1   0   Apr 01 ?           0:26
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/bin/perl -T /usr/local/bin/spamd -d -u spamass -x
-P
 spamass 18745  7243   0 14:41:01 ?           0:02
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/bin/perl -T /usr/local/bin/spamd -d -u spamass -x
-P
 spamass   370  7243   0 13:03:20 ?           0:23
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/bin/perl -T /usr/local/bin/spamd -d -u spamass -x
-P



god at smtp-02:~ 3:01pm 51 # sa-update -D
[22133] dbg: logger: adding facilities: all
[22133] dbg: logger: logging level is DBG
[22133] dbg: generic: SpamAssassin version 3.2.3
[22133] dbg: config: score set 0 chosen.
[22133] dbg: dns: no ipv6
[22133] dbg: dns: is Net::DNS::Resolver available? yes
[22133] dbg: dns: Net::DNS version: 0.61
[22133] dbg: generic: sa-update version svn540384
[22133] dbg: generic: using update directory:
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/var/spamassassin/3.002003
[22133] dbg: diag: perl platform: 5.008005 solaris
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Digest::SHA1, version 2.11
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: HTML::Parser, version 3.56
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Net::DNS, version 0.61
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: MIME::Base64, version 3.07
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: DB_File, version 1.809
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Net::SMTP, version 2.29
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Mail::SPF, version v2.005
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Mail::SPF::Query, version 1.999001
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: IP::Country::Fast, version 604.001
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Razor2::Client::Agent, version 2.84
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Net::Ident, version 1.20
[22133] dbg: diag: module not installed: IO::Socket::INET6 ('require'
failed)
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: IO::Socket::SSL, version 1.09
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Compress::Zlib, version 2.007
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Time::HiRes, version 1.59
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Mail::DomainKeys, version 1.0
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Mail::DKIM, version 0.28
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: DBI, version 1.48
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Getopt::Long, version 2.34
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: LWP::UserAgent, version 2.001
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: HTTP::Date, version 1.43
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Archive::Tar, version 1.36
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: IO::Zlib, version 1.07
[22133] dbg: diag: module installed: Encode::Detect, version 1.00
[22133] dbg: gpg: Searching for 'gpg'
[22133] dbg: util: current PATH is:
/bin:/etc:/lib:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/demo/SOUND:/usr/games:/usr/lib:/us
r/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/opt/sfw/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/lo
cal/etc:/usr/local/etc:/usr/openwin/bin:/opt/SUNWspro/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/u
sr/ucb:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/proc/bin:/usr/dt/bin:/usr/lib/nis
[22133] dbg: util: executable for gpg was found at /usr/local/bin/gpg
[22133] dbg: gpg: found /usr/local/bin/gpg
[22133] dbg: gpg: release trusted key id list:
5E541DC959CB8BAC7C78DFDC4056A61A5244EC45
26C900A46DD40CD5AD24F6D7DEE01987265FA05B
0C2B1D7175B852C64B3CDC716C55397824F434CE
[22133] dbg: channel: attempting channel updates.spamassassin.org
[22133] dbg: channel: update directory
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/var/spamassassin/3.002003/updates_spamassassin_or
g
[22133] dbg: channel: channel cf file
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/var/spamassassin/3.002003/updates_spamassassin_or
g.cf
[22133] dbg: channel: channel pre file
/usr/local/stow/perl-5.8.5/var/spamassassin/3.002003/updates_spamassassin_or
g.pre
[22133] dbg: channel: metadata version = 611820
[22133] dbg: dns: 3.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org => 611820, parsed as 611820
[22133] dbg: channel: current version is 611820, new version is 611820,
skipping channel
[22133] dbg: diag: updates complete, exiting with code 1


-- 
Fletcher Cocquyt
Senior Systems Administrator
Information Resources and Technology (IRT)
Stanford University School of Medicine

Email: fcocquyt at stanford.edu
Phone: (650) 724-7485