Debbie D wrote: > > On Mon, October 16, 2006 2:28 pm, Debbie D said: > > > > > this high amount of spam, (BTW scoring at 20-well over 1000) is > > > killing the loads and I have screaming clients.. > > > > > > Just this afternoon (again around 12.30) it loaded up again with > > > 312 mails.. the web based control panel was reacting so slow I > > > would get 3 new ones for every one I managed to delete or deliver > > > (I could not just delete the queue because some were actually > > > valid mails in there) Server loads rose to well over 30, I shut > > > exim - but cpanel was so kind to automagically restart it every > > > time.. tried a reboot from ssh but that just hung.. the tech > > > peeps did it from their end it it worked and brought the loads > > > down so I could delete faster than they came in and now we're > > > back to normal loads and queue > > > > > > I did upgrade to SA 3.1.7 last week - Wed night after a long day > > > of battling the loads.. and that seemed to go well > > > > > > suggestions? Offers of help??? > > > You probably have max children set too high. When a big > > bunch of messages come in, they all run, you don't have > > enough memory, and your system starts swapping like crazy. > > That brings everything on your server to a near halt. > > It reduces throughput, which means you get a backlog, which > > means you get stuck in this state because all the children > > stay active hogging RAM and trying to process the backlog. > > > > The solution is to either expand the RAM so the system can > > really handle that many active children at once, or set the > > maximum number of children to something much lower. Try 2 > > or 3 even. It seems like more children would mean more work > > getting done, and that's true, but it's only true up to a point, > > and you've passed that point. > > OK Logan I will investigate the RAM and see if it needs to be up'd > and kick the maxchild back down to 10 in the mean time..
10 is still a fairly large number of SA processes. I don't know if you mentioned how much RAM this machine has, but if you allow 50MB for each child, that's 500MB just for SA (this will vary depending on your settings and add-on rules). If you don't have that much available physical RAM, the system will start swapping and things will get very slow. On my system with 1GB RAM, I have to keep max-children down to 4 to avoid problems. This system also runs the mailserver, ClamAV, and Bind. I could probably get away with more processes if it was just doing SA. -- Bowie
