I would add some network check blocklists in your mail server program. Not sure how to do it in Sendmail, but it's just pasting a couple lines into postfix's main.cf. Run a local nameserver which gets local copies of the blocklist zones you utilize. This may stop half of the incoming email from ever getting to disk or SA.
We had a dual-athlon server last year which was getting about 600,000-1,000,000 messages per day and was running out of steam with the spam growth. I have since distributed the load to six single processor computers and one dual processor "front end" box to handle future spam and virus growth. I turned on network blocklists using just a couple well trusted blocklist managers (check the archives) that were willing to do zone transfers with us. This change made a big performance increase. We are not using bayes either. On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 09:22:57AM -0400, Ryan Ferguson wrote: > Sorry, I should have added more detail to this... > > - I limit the message size to 50k > - I limit sendmail connections to 20 > - I limit spamassassin spawning to 10 (-m10) > - I am using the bigevil and blacklist rulesets > > Other then upgrading to 3.0 Pre 2 (which one person suggested to me) can > anyone think of anything else to reduce the load? I can take out the > rule sets but this is not the 'best' solution as we would really like to > catch more spam. > > Any last thoughts? > > - Ryan > > -----Original Message----- > From: Bob McClure Jr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:51 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Massive Load Issues... > > On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 07:00:28PM -0400, Ryan Ferguson wrote: > > I am running Redhat AS 3.0 and SA 2.63 with sendmail and > spamass-milter. > > I will start by mentioning the following: > > > > - I am processing about 10,000 msgs / hour > > - This is a dual proc 3.2GHz Zeon with 2G of RAM. The system is not > > swapping at all (based on vmstat) > > - I have already fixed the UTF8 issue > > - I am not running any external checks (have run with spamd -L and > still > > have the same issue) > > - I have disabled the Bayes stuff (from the local.cf file) > > - I am not running the auto white list stuff (from the local.cf file) > > > > Now for the fun part... I am hitting loads of 10+ on the server on a > > regular basis which makes sendmail back off (I know how to fix the > > sendmail issue so please do not comment on that). > > > > I have tried everything I can think of to take the load off the system > > but nothing is working for me. > > > > When I do a TOP on the system, this is what I see... > > > > 18:57:50 up 8 days, 3:29, 2 users, load average: 9.37, 9.35, 9.38 > > 124 processes: 108 sleeping, 16 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped > > CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait > idle > > total 74.4% 0.0% 22.9% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% > 2.4% > > cpu00 76.1% 0.0% 21.9% 0.0% 0.1% 0.0% > 1.7% > > cpu01 70.2% 0.0% 26.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.1% > 3.4% > > cpu02 76.7% 0.0% 21.1% 0.0% 0.1% 0.0% > 1.9% > > cpu03 74.6% 0.0% 22.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.1% > 2.6% > > Mem: 2061652k av, 1496032k used, 565620k free, 0k shrd, > 84660k > > buff > > 905668k actv, 258248k in_d, 8904k in_c > > Swap: 2097112k av, 0k used, 2097112k free > 439292k > > cached > > > > PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU > > COMMAND > > 17262 mail 25 0 107M 107M 2400 R 7.9 5.3 0:01 2 > spamd > > 17298 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2400 R 4.7 5.3 0:00 1 > spamd > > 17284 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2392 R 4.5 5.3 0:00 3 > spamd > > 17286 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2392 R 4.3 5.3 0:00 3 > spamd > > 17301 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2412 R 3.5 5.3 0:00 3 > spamd > > 17295 mail 25 0 107M 107M 2392 R 3.4 5.3 0:00 3 > spamd > > 17333 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2392 R 3.4 5.3 0:00 2 > spamd > > 17319 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2416 R 3.3 5.3 0:00 0 > spamd > > 17310 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2416 R 3.0 5.3 0:00 1 > spamd > > 17314 mail 25 0 108M 108M 2416 R 2.9 5.3 0:00 0 > spamd > > 17330 mail 25 0 107M 107M 2412 R 2.9 5.3 0:00 0 > spamd > > 7944 mail 23 0 107M 107M 2376 S 1.2 5.3 5:03 2 > spamd > > > > Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can try next? Any help is > > greatly appriciated... > > > > - Ryan > > You don't mention what rulesets you are using. I'll guess the list > includes blacklist.cf and bigevil.cf. If so, rename blacklist.cf and > restart spamd and see if things improve. If using bigevil only, > rename it and try the same thing. > > Both those rulesets have grown so large that they are deprecated in > favor of installing Mail::SpamAssassin::SpamCopURI and its > spamcop_uri.cf. See > > http://ws.surbl.org/ > > Also note that it will bust three of the redirect tests. You can > safely ignore them and force the install. Then you can tear out > blacklist*.cf and bigevil.cf. > > Cheers, > -- > Bob McClure, Jr. Bobcat Open Systems, Inc. > [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.bobcatos.com > What did Noah do with the woodpeckers? > -- /* Jason Philbrook | Midcoast Internet Solutions - Internet Access, KB1IOJ | Hosting, and TCP-IP Networks for Midcoast Maine http://f64.nu/ | http://www.midcoast.com/ */
