DNS time-outs are usually 10 seconds.
14-10 = 4, which is normal.
I would check if your DNS tests run smoothly and do not time out somewhere.
-Sietse
From: Justin Mason
Sent: Thu 28-Sep-06 17:00
To: John D. Hardin
Cc: Deephay; Olivier Nicole; users@spamassassin.apache.org
Subject: Re: really slow spamd scan
"John D. Hardin" writes:
>On Thu, 28 Sep 2006, Deephay wrote:
>
>> On 9/28/06, Olivier Nicole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > > I am quite new to SA (a week of SA life), and the SA is working, the
>> > > thing is, SA is incredibly slow on my server (2.8GHZ CPU + 2GB Memory
>> > > + Qmail + Qmail-scanner). Here's a typical scan log:
>> > >
>> > > result: . 0 - SPF_PASS scantime=14.7,size=1689 .......
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > Problem is not that it is slow.
>> >
>> > That SA takes 14 seconds to deliver a message is not an issue, email
>> > is not a real time process anyway and transiting email from one
>> > gateway to another can take minutes or hours.
>>
>> The scantime=14.7 does not mean the scan time of spamassassin?
>
>It does. 14.7 seconds to scan the message.
>
>> > Problem would be is SA would make high CPU load on your server.
>> >
>> > 14 seconds may be just the delay for the various network tests to
>> > respond.
>>
>> You mean the test form SA?
>
>Yes. The various DNS and URI blocklist lookups and Razor/Pyzor/DCC all
>take time to complete.
>
>A system snapshot (load average, running processes, memory consumption
>including swap) taken during processing of a message would help us
>determine whether there *is* a problem. If fifteen seconds is the high
>end of what you are seeing, you do not have a problem.
>
>> I have googled for this kind of situations and I found I am the
>> slowest. If I stop the spamd, the delivery will be much faster.
>
>If you are worried about a fifteen second delay in delivery of email
>you need to tune your users' expectations, *NOT* SpamAssassin.
>
>I've said it before and I'll say it again: Email is a best-effort,
>non-guaranteed store-and-forward messaging system. It is not Instant
>Messaging. It is not a general-purpose file transfer utility. Delays
>will happen.
In fairness, though, I would agree that 14 seconds is pretty
long for most cases. On my pretty old 1.5ghz server, I get
this kind of distribution:
number seconds
401 0 - 1
280 1 - 2
185 2 - 3
110 3 - 4
46 4 - 5
36 5 - 6
34 6 - 7
15 7 - 8
13 8 - 9
17 9 - 10
4 10 - 11
9 11 - 12
8 12 - 13
4 13 - 14
4 14 - 15
20 15 seconds or more
IOW, a large majority complete in under 4 seconds. See the wiki
for speed-up tips.
--j.
