I've been running Mimedefang with Sendmail 8.12 for several months. Most of the time, it works great. Although I am running the multiplexor, I rarely see more than two mimedefang.pl processes. However, about once per week, I find several mimedefang processes in state D, blocking. When this happens, the system stops processing mail. The load average climbs from its normal 1 or 2 to as high as 27, most of which represents the blocked mimedefang processes. However, while the CPU load is under 2%, console response time is terrible. I can get a response, but it takes very long.
Thus far, I haven't found a solution to this short of rebooting. I've stopped sendmail, mimedefang, and milter-sender, and killed -9 all the hung mimedefang processes. When I do that, the load average drops and console response time returns to normal. But when I restart the daemons, the problem returns within a few minutes. Clearly, I haven't found the cause of the blockage, and stopping the daemon is not sufficient to clear it. Debugging is possible, but painful, while the system is hung, so I don't do much of it; I want to restore service ASAP. But with some clue as to where to look, I can certainly do so. Details: Red Hat Linux 9.0, completely up-to-date with yum. Sendmail 8.12.11 built from source to include the milter interface. Mimedefang 2.43. Milter-sender 0.55. Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "The cost of silicon chips has been [EMAIL PROTECTED], +1 714 434 7359 steady at about $1bn per acre for [EMAIL PROTECTED] 40 years." --Gordon Moore _______________________________________________ Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.canit.ca MIMEDefang mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
