[Mimedefang] multiple CPUs, multiple milters!

[Kevin A. McGrail]

Anne,

The hyperthreading is both normal and irrelevant I believe.  The number of
child processes started most likely has more to do with the default to
start.

I think you are missing a standard configuration script and configuration
file to set all these type of defaults.

You might benefit from reading through the install we have at
http://www.pccc.com/downloads/MIMEDefang/

You really should get an init style script for stopping and starting the
milter/multiplexor

Regards,
KAM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anne Bennett" <anne at encs.concordia.ca>
Subject: [Mimedefang] multiple CPUs, multiple milters!


>
> Folks,
>
> My hardware has two CPUs, seen by the Linux kernel (2.4.21) as four
> CPUS -- which is apparently normal for these Intel Xeon processors
> with "hyperthreading".  Weird, but the system works fine.
>
> But... when I start up mimedefang (the milter process), I get four of
> them!  The PID in the pidfile is that of the first one (lowest PID).
>
> I have not yet tested the set-up hard, though initial light testing shows
> MIMEDefang to be working as expected.  So far, the only problem I have
> is that during shutdown, killing just the PID registered in the
> pidfile is not sufficient to get rid of all four processes.
>
> I will be testing further shortly, but I have a bad feeling about
> this; am I really supposed to be getting a milter process for each CPU?
> (For example, Tru64Unix does not do this.)  Has anyone else come across
> this with Linux on a multi-CPU host?
>
> The milter is started as:
>
>   /local/paths/mimedefang -P /local/var/spam/mimedefang-milter.pid \
>     -m /local/var/spam/mimedefang-multiplexor.sock \
>     -p /local/var/spam/mimedefang-milter.sock -r -t -k -T -X