[Mimedefang] Off Topic - Mail Message and MySQL

[schmaus]

> Benjamin;
>
> I just posted asking David if his commercial product's
> filter directly updates the database, or if it is some
> form of post processing.
> I don't have hard numbers [yet], but we struggle to keep
> MD + SA running in environments processing more than 1
> milling e-mail per day.  I've written a lot of perl / DBI
> code, and my [admittedly anecdotal] opinion is that
> anything time consuming that can me removed from the MD
> filter would better serve high volume sites.
>
> You could try refactoring your current processing to move
> your DB updates to a separate task.  Have the filter log
> to the file system, then have your task run every 5
> minutes from cron, loading data from the quarantine
> directories then removing the file system entries.  This
> way your filter is lighter weight ... and if your DB
> server is down, filtering will not slow or stall and the
> cron job can just try again 5 minutes later.
> I'm looking forward to David's observations as this has
> been implemented in MD's sister product line.
>
> ... Phil
>
>

Phil,

I designed the DB updates in the mimedefang-filter because
when I go to the website to view what is in the quarantine,
I wanted it in realtime.  I did not like the idea of having
a cron job running every 10-15 minutes.

I wasn't really worried about the DB server going down
because what I do is use DNS MX records to route the mail to
a server that has the webserver/DB/sendmail/Mimedefang on
it.  It does the filtering and then a mailertable directs
the mail to the destination SMTP server.  I also set up a
secondary MX in the DNS.  If by chance the mail proxy filter
server goes down, I just add a mailertable route to the
secondary SMTP while the primary (mail proxy filter) is
being serviced.

Benjamin