[Mimedefang] Embedding Perl in Multiplexor -- good idea?

David F. Skoll dfs at roaringpenguin.com
Wed Oct 22 20:20:11 EDT 2003


On Wed, 22 Oct 2003, Lucas Albers wrote:

> I like the current setup because:
> I don't have to restart mimedefang to read in a new filter.

Actually, thinking about it some more, it's possible to achieve this even
if you embed Perl.  Upon receipt of a request to reread the filter,
you just destroy the Perl interpreter and create a fresh one.  You also
let slaves die off just like we do now.  This is done "atomically" so
that no Milter requests are lost.

The big question mark is whether destroying a Perl interpreter really,
honestly, truly frees up all the memory allocated by Perl.  The big
advantage of the current scheme is that it's highly resilient in the
face of Perl memory leaks.  People routinely leave the multiplexor
running for months.

--
David.



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