[Mimedefang] tmpfs on Linux

[Greg Miller]

Thanks to everyone who helped with my performance problems. In the end,
I doubled the amount of RAM to 2GB. This prevented swapping and allowed
by 50 sendmail processed and 15 mimedefang slaves to run with sufficient
memory. 

In the process, I learned a lot about sendmail performance tuning,
mostly that I need to learn more. :)

During my investigations I noticed that many of my sendmail processes
hang around for quite some time, presumably because the host on the
other end is slow. I stumbled across a recommendation that the sendmail
default timeouts be tuned as follows: Anyone else doing this?

define(`confTO_INITIAL', `30s')
define(`confTO_CONNECT', `30s')
define(`confTO_ICONNECT', `30s')
define(`confTO_HELO', `1m')
define(`confTO_MAIL', `2m')
define(`confTO_RCPT', `2m')
define(`confTO_DATAINIT', `2m')
define(`confTO_DATABLOCK', `2m')
define(`confTO_DATAFINAL', `5m')
define(`confTO_RESET', `1m')
define(`confTO_QUIT', `1m')
define(`confTO_MISC', `2m')
define(`confTO_COMMAND', `1m')
define(`confTO_IDENT', `0s')
define(`confTO_FILEOPEN', `1m')
define(`confTO_CONTROL', `1m')
define(`confTO_HOSTSTATUS', `5m')

-- 
Greg Miller, RHCE, CCNA, MCSE
Senior Network Specialist
University of Richmond
gmiller at richmond.edu
(804) 289-8546
On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 09:13 -0500, Kevin A. McGrail wrote:
> > How would you suggest I do this? I have tried setting MaxDaemonChildren
> > to 20, but those quickly get eaten up and I just end up refusing lots of
> > mail. What is the recommended course of action in this case?
> 
> Well, it just sounds like you need more RAM first which I think you agree
> on.
> 
> Second, you may need to lower the amount of time your MIMEDefang spends on
> messages.  Have you considered turning off the SpamAssassin Network-Based
> tests?
> 
> Third, you need to look at your mail volume.  Do you know how many messages
> per day/per hour you are getting?  You might just simply need a more
> powerful machine or a cluster of machines to share the load.
> 
> Fourth, are you having any issues with dictionary attacks or email
> harvesting?  Is this machine the mail destination or just a gateway to
> another mail server?
> 
> 
> > True. Maybe we should just stop this email business. It's just a fad,
> > right? :)
> 
> I'd laugh if I didn't have a customer once argue this with me.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> KAM
> 
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