Huge load average on mail server
I recently became responsible for our mail server, and lately, the load average on the thing has been running consistently high, in mid-20's to mid-30's. And at the same time, sendmail has become extremely sluggish in terms of responding to connections on port 25. There's got to be a bottleneck somewhere, but my experience leaves me ill-equipped to seek it out. What procedures would folks recommend for me to follow in order to try and determine the problem? Thank you, john -- +---+ | John Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |System Administrator | InfoStructure | +---+ | "The people and friends that we have lost, the dreams that have faded... | | never forget them." -- Yuna, Final Fantasy X| +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Huge load average on mail server
At 2003-07-23T21:37:46Z, John Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What procedures would folks recommend for me to follow in order to try and
> determine the problem?
Step one: run `top' and see what process(es) are using the most CPU. It may
be something not directly related to Sendmail. For example, one of my
associates wrote his own bulk mail delivery program to inject a huge number
of messages into the outgoing mail (he works with an ecommerce site with a
large opt-in newsletter list). A minor error in his code:
if (numberOfRunningProcesses != 10) { fork(); }
instead of:
if (numberOfRunningProcesses <= 10) { fork(); }
caused his program to occasionally flip out and large several hundred
running copies of itself (hi, Aaron!).
--
Kirk Strauser
pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: Huge load average on mail server
Try checking out the book Absolute BSD from Michael Lucas. You can find a link to the sample Chapter regarding system performance here at http://www.absolutebsd.com I've found the rest of the book to be rather good as well. But if nothing else, that sample chapter alone should give you a pretty good idea of what's going on. Hope this helps. -Chris "From : John Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject : Huge load average on mail server Date : Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:37:46 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Precedence: list Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message: 19 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii MIME-Version: 1.0Precedence: listMessage-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Message: 19 I recently became responsible for our mail server, and lately, the load average on the thing has been running consistently high, in mid-20's to mid-30's. And at the same time, sendmail has become extremely sluggish in terms of responding to connections on port 25. There's got to be a bottleneck somewhere, but my experience leaves me ill-equipped to seek it out. What procedures would folks recommend for me to follow in order to try and determine the problem? Thank you, john" _ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Huge load average on mail server
From: "John Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 4:37 PM Subject: Huge load average on mail server > I recently became responsible for our mail server, and lately, the load > average on the thing has been running consistently high, in mid-20's to > mid-30's. And at the same time, sendmail has become extremely sluggish > in terms of responding to connections on port 25. > > There's got to be a bottleneck somewhere, but my experience leaves me > ill-equipped to seek it out. > > What procedures would folks recommend for me to follow in order to try and > determine the problem? > > Thank you, > > john In addition to other thoughts on this thread, if it IS the MTA: Examine queues; attempt to find patterns in logs, check DNS speed/configuration, check disks, memory, etc. KDK ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
