>>>>> "DBF" == David B Funk <David> writes:
DBF> On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Jake Colman wrote:
>>
>> I posted this problem last week and was told that it might be due to an
>> SA problem when overwhelmed by too many connections. This problem only
>> occurs when my server has been off-line and then gets swamped from the
>> backup MX once it comes back on-line.
>>
>> I use the default number of spamd children and have configured sendmail
>> for 25 daemon children. SA works perfectly and is filtering
>> wonderfully except for this one situation when I come back on-line and
>> get swampled. The initial batch of emails that I receive are clearly
>> missing my SA headers. This seems to imply that SA ignored it.
>>
>> What do I do about this?!
DBF> From your comments, I'm going to infer that you're using
DBF> sendmail+procmail+spamc+spamd rather than sendmail+milter+spamd
DBF> This means that you're running SA at delivery time rather than incoming
DBF> connection time.
Correct. I use procmail and spams/spamd. Is it better to use a milter or is
just an alternate way of doing things?
DBF> The easy way to prevent SA overload in that scenario is to
DBF> single-thread the delivery process at those times. Just tell your
DBF> sendmail to queue messages and deliver at the queue run rather than
DBF> deliver immediately. At queue-run time, the messages are removed
DBF> from the queue and processed one-at-a-time.
I assume that when doing delivery at the queue it still passes the email
through procmail and spamc/spamd, correct?
DBF> You may be able to automate this, try reducing your 'queue-loadave'
DBF> value to something just above the usual loadave value for your
DBF> machine. (the confQUEUE_LA value in your .mc file or QueueLA in your
DBF> .cf file). Idea is that when your machine is handling that backup MX
DBF> flood, its loadave goes up and triggers the queuing behavior.
DBF> If the loadave does -not- go up (due to waiting for things like DNS
DBF> queries) then you'll have to manually trigger the queuing behavior.
DBF> Edit your sendmail.cf (or .mc) file to add the 'Expensive' flag ("e")
DBF> to your local mailer and run sendmail with the 'HoldExpensive=true'
DBF> option set. (can do this from the command line, start sendmail with
DBF> the '-OHoldExpensive=true' argument added.
Where, exactly, does the 'Expensive' flag get added in the sendmail.mc file?
--
Jake Colman
Sr. Applications Developer
Principia Partners LLC
Harborside Financial Center
1001 Plaza Two
Jersey City, NJ 07311
(201) 209-2467
www.principiapartners.com
