[Mimedefang] clamd memory leak?

Les Mikesell les at futuresource.com
Thu Apr 15 16:05:46 EDT 2004


I've run into my first performance issue with mimedefang/clamd and
eventually realized that it was being caused by some huge outlook
attachments forwarded by an internal server through the external
box running mimedefang.  The attachments were encoded as winmail.dat
and I'm not sure what clamd did with them but it seemed to involve
a file in /tmp, a lot of CPU, and enough time that mimedefang always
timed out and tmpfailed the message.  The user, of course, resent the
thing several times because it wasn't reaching the destination, and
the internal server kept retrying each copy.  After some number of
these, the clamd processes would grow to the point where they consumed
all system memory and swap space.  Besides slapping the user around,
what should I do to keep this from happening again?  (I think the first
choice would be to bump the timer up so it would go through, but I'd
like to set an approximately matching size limit at the sendmail level
so it will either reject something immediately or handle it correctly).
Is there some consensus on what the max size of a mail message should
be?  These were around 150Meg.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com




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