[Mimedefang] MD consuming all memory...

[Ken Morley]

I have a SpamAssassin server loaded with MD 2.41, Sendmail 8.12.11, etc. all
running under RedHat V7.X.  This has been installed and working well for
over six months.

Lately, users have been complaining about e-mail not getting through, etc.,
so I started looking.  I didn't have to look far.

Top shows mimedefang.pl with a size 208MB and RSS 172MB.  The system only
has 384MB of RAM, so mimedefang is consuming all memory and causing Linux to
have to use swap.  There are multiple slaves, all using similar amounts of
memory.  This happens even when I pull the network cable and so no mail is
processed.

The system still processes email, but slowly and some connections timeout.
Sendmail frequently is returning "Deferred: 451 4.7.1 Please try again
later."  

I've tried limiting the slaves memory to something reasonable (like 10MB),
but then maillog shows that the slaves are running out of memory.

Any idea why this would be stable for months and now the slaves use so much
memory?  It's not traffic as the box only processes about a hundred emails a
day (few with attachments) and the problem is evident even when the network
cable is unplugged.  Any ideas how to troubleshoot this further?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Ken Morley