[Mimedefang] Milter timeouts with SpamAssassin

[Nels Lindquist]

I've been testing the SpamAssassin integration with MIMEDefang for 
the past couple of weeks, and I finally decided to try v2.3-BETA-3 on 
a production (but low traffic) mail server over the weekend to see 
how things would go.

Everything worked fine for about eight hours, and then MIMEDefang 
started timing out on pretty much every message:

Jan 12 01:29:47 aerodrome sendmail[13857]: g0C8Sfr13857: 
milter_read(mimedefang): timeout 
Jan 12 01:31:25 aerodrome sendmail[13867]: g0C8UHr13867: 
milter_read(mimedefang): timeout 
Jan 12 01:32:01 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Starting slave 2 
(pid 13875) (3 running): About to perform scan
Jan 12 01:33:01 aerodrome sendmail[13874]: g0C8Vtr13874: 
milter_read(mimedefang): timeout 
Jan 12 01:33:41 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Starting slave 3 
(pid 13883) (4 running): About to perform scan
Jan 12 01:33:47 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: 
handleSlaveReceivedAnswer(1): Timeout or error: Flag = 3
Jan 12 01:33:47 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Killing slave 1 
(pid 12312): Busy timeout
Jan 12 01:33:47 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Reap: Idle slave 1 
(pid 12312) exited due to SIGTERM as expected.
Jan 12 01:33:47 aerodrome mimedefang[13856]: Error from multiplexor: 
ERR Filter timed out
Jan 12 01:34:41 aerodrome sendmail[13882]: g0C8XWr13882: 
milter_read(mimedefang): timeout 
Jan 12 01:35:17 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Starting slave 1 
(pid 13891) (4 running): About to perform scan
Jan 12 01:35:25 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: 
handleSlaveReceivedAnswer(0): Timeout or error: Flag = 3
Jan 12 01:35:25 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Killing slave 0 
(pid 12311): Busy timeout
Jan 12 01:35:25 aerodrome mimedefang[13866]: Error from multiplexor: 
ERR Filter timed out
Jan 12 01:35:25 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Reap: Idle slave 0 
(pid 12311) exited due to SIGTERM as expected.
Jan 12 01:36:17 aerodrome sendmail[13890]: g0C8ZBr13890: 
milter_read(mimedefang): timeout 
Jan 12 01:36:55 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Starting slave 0 
(pid 13900) (4 running): About to perform scan
Jan 12 01:37:01 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: 
handleSlaveReceivedAnswer(2): Timeout or error: Flag = 3
Jan 12 01:37:01 aerodrome mimedefang-multiplexor: Killing slave 2 
(pid 13875): Busy timeout
Jan 12 01:37:01 aerodrome mimedefang[13873]: Error from multiplexor: 
ERR Filter timed out

Eventually, I also see messages like this:

Jan 14 08:37:32 aerodrome sendmail[11051]: g0EFbWk11051: 
milter_write(mimedefang): write(D) returned -1, expected 5: Broken 
pipe
Jan 14 08:37:32 aerodrome sendmail[11051]: g0EFbWk11051: Please try 
again later
....
Jan 14 08:31:10 aerodrome mimedefang[10629]: Perl stderr: Constant 
subroutine __need___va_list undefined at /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-
linux/stdarg.ph line 9.
Jan 14 08:31:10 aerodrome mimedefang[10629]: Perl stderr: Premature 
end of base64 data at 
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/Mail/SpamAssassin/PerMsgStatus.pm line 

1055.

I remember David mentioning that the timeout should be increased to 
30 seconds.  Is that the 
clientTimeout parameter for mimedefang-multiplexor?  Currently, 
maxIdleTime=300, busyTimeout=300, clientTimeout=10.

The MIMEDefang input filter in sendmail.cf is defined with 
T=S:60s;R:60s;E:5m, which has been adequate for virus scanning.

I'm attaching a copy of my mimedefang-filter in case it's useful.
----
Nels Lindquist <*>
Information Systems Manager
Morningstar Air Express Inc.

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