Re: [sniffer] Rash of false positives

[Darrell (supp...@invariantsystems.com)]

It is used in both versions for different things. Darrell ------------------------------------------- Check out http://www.invariantsystems.com for utilities for Declude, mxGuard, and Imail.  IMail Queue Monitoring, Declude Overflow Queue Monitoring, SURBL/URI integration, MRTG Integration, and Log Parsers. ----- Original Message ----- From: Serge To: sniffer@SortMonster.com Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 9:27 PM Subject: Re: [sniffer] Rash of false positives i thought declude.cfg is for V 3.x Am I wrong ? is declude.cfg used with V 2.x ?   ----- Original Message ----- From: John Moore To: sniffer@SortMonster.com Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 11:12 PM Subject: RE: [sniffer] Rash of false positives Matt, Thank you for your help and thorough explanation. I added the declude.cfg with the PROCESSES 20 We are running declude 2.06 and have the JM pro and AV standard. We will look into getting the persistent mode setup and see if that helps as well. Thanks, again. John   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 4:49 PM To: sniffer@SortMonster.com Subject: Re: [sniffer] Rash of false positives   John, The mystery heap issue is a memory issue with Windows where it only reserves so much memory for running things like Declude, Sniffer, other external tests and your virus scanners.  If you have something that is hanging, running slowly, or taking too long, it can gobble up all of the memory available to these launched processes and then result in errors.  Generally speaking, you can only get about 40 or so processes of these types to run at one time before you could start seeing these errors.  Declude counts as one process, and often there is one other process that Declude launches that goes to this count (external tests and virus scanners are all run in serial so only one can be launched at a time by a single Declude process).  If you have something like a virus scanner that crashes and then pops up a window on your next login, this can count towards the number of open processes. You can specify in Declude how many processes to run before Declude starts dumping things into an overflow, either the overflow folder in 2.x and before, or something under proc in 3.x.  If you create a file called Declude.cfg and place in it "PROCESSES   20" that should protect you from hitting the mystery heap's limitations unless something is crashing and hanging.  You might want to check Task Manager for processes to verify if things are hanging since not everything will pop up a window. I believe that running Sniffer in persistent mode will help to alleviate this condition, but it's only one part and if the mystery heap is the cause, it might just cause the errors to be triggered on other IMail launched processes including Declude.exe and your virus scanners. Matt John Moore wrote: We have not  run snf2check on the updates. And it may be a coincidence or bad timing that sniffer appears to be the culprit. But we have stopped sniffer (commented out in the declude global.cfg) for an observed period of time and the mail never stops (and had never stopped before sniffer) and conversely, it only stops when sniffer is running. We have not gone the extra steps of putting sniffer in persistent mode. We are looking at moving the imail/declude/sniffer setup to a newer box with more resources. Currently on a dell 2450 dual 833 and 1 gig of ram and raid 5. Volume of email is less than 10,000 emails per day. J   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Darin Cox Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:47 PM To: sniffer@SortMonster.com Subject: Re: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives   Are corrupted rulebase files the culprit?   How do you update... and do you run snf2check on the updates?   Just wondering if the rulebase file is the problem, if the problem occurs during the update, or if you are running into obscure errors with the EXE itself.... Darin.     ----- Original Message ----- From: John Moore To: sniffer@SortMonster.com Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 12:42 PM Subject: RE: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives   We had this same thing happen. It has been happening more frequently recently and we are looking into disabling sniffer as it seems to be the culprit each time. John Moore 305 Spin   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Richard Farris Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 11:38 AM To: sniffer@SortMonster.com Subject: Re: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives   This morning my server quit sending mail and my tech said the Dr. Watson error on the server was my Sniffer file...I rebooted and thought it was OK but quit again..I had a lot of mail back logged...so I updated a new rule base but it did not seem to help....I reinstalled Imail and things seem OK but slow since there is such a back log of mail....If things don't get back to normal I will be back.. Richard Farris Ethixs Online 1.270.247.5555 Office 1.800.548.3877 Tech Support "Crossroads to a Cleaner Internet" ----- Original Message ----- From: Pete McNeil To: Darin Cox Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 3:03 PM Subject: Re[4]: [sniffer] Rash of false positives   On Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 3:25:20 PM, Darin wrote:   >  Hi Pete,   There was a consistent stream of false positives over the mentioned time period, not just a blast at a particular time.  They suddenly started at 5pm (shortly after a 4:30pm rulesbase update), and were fairly evenly spread from 5pm - 11pm and 6am - 10am today (not many legitimate emails came in between 11pm and 6am)...spanning 4 other rulebase updates at 8:40pm, 12am, 3am, and 6:20am.  There were a number of different rules involved, and over 45 false positives in that time period.   This is highly unusual -- I didn't remove many rules, and normally only one or two would be responsible. If you found that a large number of rules were responsible then something else happend and we need to look at that... I'd need to see your SNF logs from that period since the changes (removals anyway) in the rulebase were very small and unrelated - that just doesn't line up with your description.   One thing does-- in the past if snf2check was not used to check a new download then a corrupted rulebase could cause SNF to produce erratic results... since snf2check has been in place we have not seen this. Is it possible that a bad rulebase file got pressed into service on your system? -- probably a look at the logs would help there too since this kind of failure is accompanied by very specific oddities in the logs.   Hope this helps,   _M   This E-Mail came from the Message Sniffer mailing list. For information and (un)subscription instructions go to http://www.sortmonster.com/MessageSniffer/Help/Help.html