Thanks to everyone who helped with my performance problems. In the end, I doubled the amount of RAM to 2GB. This prevented swapping and allowed by 50 sendmail processed and 15 mimedefang slaves to run with sufficient memory.
In the process, I learned a lot about sendmail performance tuning, mostly that I need to learn more. :) During my investigations I noticed that many of my sendmail processes hang around for quite some time, presumably because the host on the other end is slow. I stumbled across a recommendation that the sendmail default timeouts be tuned as follows: Anyone else doing this? define(`confTO_INITIAL', `30s') define(`confTO_CONNECT', `30s') define(`confTO_ICONNECT', `30s') define(`confTO_HELO', `1m') define(`confTO_MAIL', `2m') define(`confTO_RCPT', `2m') define(`confTO_DATAINIT', `2m') define(`confTO_DATABLOCK', `2m') define(`confTO_DATAFINAL', `5m') define(`confTO_RESET', `1m') define(`confTO_QUIT', `1m') define(`confTO_MISC', `2m') define(`confTO_COMMAND', `1m') define(`confTO_IDENT', `0s') define(`confTO_FILEOPEN', `1m') define(`confTO_CONTROL', `1m') define(`confTO_HOSTSTATUS', `5m') -- Greg Miller, RHCE, CCNA, MCSE Senior Network Specialist University of Richmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] (804) 289-8546 On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 09:13 -0500, Kevin A. McGrail wrote: > > How would you suggest I do this? I have tried setting MaxDaemonChildren > > to 20, but those quickly get eaten up and I just end up refusing lots of > > mail. What is the recommended course of action in this case? > > Well, it just sounds like you need more RAM first which I think you agree > on. > > Second, you may need to lower the amount of time your MIMEDefang spends on > messages. Have you considered turning off the SpamAssassin Network-Based > tests? > > Third, you need to look at your mail volume. Do you know how many messages > per day/per hour you are getting? You might just simply need a more > powerful machine or a cluster of machines to share the load. > > Fourth, are you having any issues with dictionary attacks or email > harvesting? Is this machine the mail destination or just a gateway to > another mail server? > > > > True. Maybe we should just stop this email business. It's just a fad, > > right? :) > > I'd laugh if I didn't have a customer once argue this with me. > > > Regards, > KAM > > _______________________________________________ > Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.canit.ca > MIMEDefang mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang _______________________________________________ Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.canit.ca MIMEDefang mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
