On Sun, Jun 09, 2002 at 11:06:32PM +0100, Sean Rima wrote: | Yeah the spam[c/d] setup. My average is around 15 seconds, well it is an | old p133 the slowest appears to be 93 seconds. I am a dialup user and | when I go online off peak for the first time, fetchmail can throw over a | 1000 emails at spam[c/d]. I also use DCC and have no performance | problems there.
The real problem you have is not so much spamd's performance, but the
fact that it sits idle 99% of the time, then gets slammed with 1K
messages in a matter of seconds. Even with my Duron 750 and not much
else happening, the box can effectively freeze (no UI response) with a
load average of 30 if I hit it with 900+ messages almost
instantaneously.
What you should do is
1) put this in your exim.conf (IIRC you're using exim)
deliver_queue_load_max = 5.0
2) At least while you're retrieving your mail, run queue runners
quite often. I think the debian default is every 15 minutes.
What this will do is cause exim to only queue the messages, no
delivery processing (SA scanning), if the system's load average is
above 5. When the load average drops below the threshold, the next
queue runner will attempt a delivery. By doing this you can spread
the load over a larger amount of time and not feel the effects as
much.
Eg my system is "always on", so mail arrives as it arrives (usually
one at a time) so SA has no difficulty snagging a bit of CPU for a
couple seconds even while I'm doing all sorts of other work on the
machine.
HTH,
-D
--
There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him :
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies
and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19
GnuPG key : http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/public_key.gpg
msg06080/pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
