[Mimedefang] Off Topic - Mail Message and MySQL

[Chris Masters]

I'm currently using MySQL to log mails and store white
and black lists using my own code rather than SA's.

I also use MySQL to store scan policies (virus,spam
etc) based on email-address or domain. The policy is
obtained in filter_begin and determines what filters
to pass the mail though.

If there is a database failure I tempfail.

Now, I would like to know if there is any benefit in
writing a seperate daemon process that maintains DB
connections (MIMEDefang can connect via a unix socket)
OR to maintain a DB connection per slave as per
David's solution.

Again, I think the question is: How much do we allow
MIMEDefang do and how much do we off load on to other
processes?

--- "David F. Skoll" <dfs at roaringpenguin.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Phil Eschallier wrote:
> 
> > I believe that I could have expressed my thoughts
> better.  Actually, I was
> > thinking that "what if the DB server is down or
> you hit your connect limit?"
> 
> In our case, it's optional as to whether you
> tempfail the mail or just deliver
> it unscanned.
> 
> > A flood of spam or virus traffic could easily
> > push connections up to a high level
> 
> The number of connections is bounded by the maximum
> number of slaves.  It's
> one DB connection per slave only.
> 
> > In contrast, the file system should always be
> there (I'll probably receive a
> > shot or two for that statement).
> 
> A flood of spam can use up all your I/O bandwidth,
> whether the I/O is
> on your disk controller or to the database.  It's
> not clear to me that
> the database would be swamped before the disk is
> swamped, especially
> if you run the DB on the same machine as MIMEDefang
> (the typical
> situation for our customers.)  The DB really is just
> another type of
> file system.
> 
> There might even be an argument that a DB with
> write-ahead log files
> might make better use of disk I/O than putting lots
> of small files in
> lots of different disk directories.  A single disk
> seek costs way more
> than a bunch of writes in nearby disk locations.
> 
> This is all theoretical, of course!  I haven't run
> measurements comparing
> the approaches. :-)
> 
> --
> David.
> 
> 
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