[Mimedefang] Mimedefang processes are blocking

[Kelsey Cummings]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 09:15:19PM -0500, David F. Skoll wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Dave Close wrote:
> 
> >   26534 ?  S  0:03 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6158 ?  D  0:02 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6265 ?  D  0:01 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6266 ?  D  0:02 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6326 ?  D  0:01 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6327 ?  D  0:01 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6334 ?  D  0:01 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6446 ?  D  0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6476 ?  D  0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> >    6477 ?  D  0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/mimedefang.pl -server
> 
> It's hard to know why this is happening.  Try using the embedded Perl
> interpreter -- perhaps your machine is running out of memory and swapping.
> It could also be a hardware problem.  Our main server would periodically
> lock up with load averages in the hundreds.  It turned out to be a flaky
> disk that would sometimes take orders of magnitude longer than usual to
> perform I/O.

strace is your friend.  It should tell you very quickly what FH it's
blocking on and ls in /proc will resolve the FH for you.  From there it
should be pretty easy to decide what the problem is - if, for example, it's
waiting on the spools and the disk as shown by iostat is at 100%
utilization you know it's the disk causing the problem.

-- 
Kelsey Cummings - kgc at sonic.net           sonic.net, inc.
System Administrator                      2260 Apollo Way
707.522.1000 (Voice)                      Santa Rosa, CA 95407
707.547.2199 (Fax)                        http://www.sonic.net/
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