[Mimedefang] BIG problems with mimedefang

[Lisa Casey]

Hi,

I'm running Redhat 7.2  This computer functions as a Radius server (cistron 
radius 1.6.7) and as a mail server (sendmail 8.12.6) which also runs 
MIMEDefang 2.48 and SpamAssassin version 3.0.1  running on Perl version 
5.8.5.

This setup has been working great up until  this past weekend. I posted 
about problems with mimedefang over the weekend. Mimedefang was running out 
of free slaves and mail was stopping. I discovered that my max slaves was 
set to 10 and increased that to 30 hoping that would solve the  problem. It 
hasn't. Here's what I'm seeing. Things will be going along ok, then suddenly 
the server load will shoot up from 0.something to over 30! When that happens 
mail stops. A top shows something like this:

2:14pm up 22:19, 4 users, load average: 31.11, 25.02, 12.31
216 processes: 211 sleeping, 2 running, 1 zombie, 2 stopped
CPU states: 7.5% user, 56.0% system, 0.0% nice, 36.4% idle
Mem: 512900K av, 509840K used, 3060K free, 0K shrd, 1800K buff
Swap: 522072K av, 520104K used, 1968K free 5204K cached
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
11917 root 14 0 1140 1140 804 R 7.0 0.2 0:02 top
4 root 11 0 0 0 0 SW 6.5 0.0 6:12 kswapd
11859 defang 10 0 30572 20M 1852 D 6.3 4.0 0:10 mimedefang.pl
11657 defang 10 0 30172 9252 1820 D 3.0 1.8 0:07 mimedefang.pl
11652 defang 9 0 29184 8400 1832 D 2.9 1.6 0:07 mimedefang.pl
11759 defang 9 0 18888 7480 1748 D 1.5 1.4 0:06 mimedefang.pl
7243 root 9 0 2300 1716 1588 S 1.3 0.3 0:00 sendmail
11705 defang 9 0 18884 5336 1828 D 1.3 1.0 0:06 mimedefang.pl
11104 defang 9 0 31484 5416 1888 D 1.2 1.0 0:13 mimedefang.pl
11665 defang 9 0 30236 10M 1860 D 1.2 2.0 0:08 mimedefang.pl
11756 defang 9 0 18888 8252 1748 D 1.2 1.6 0:06 mimedefang.pl
11768 defang 9 0 18888 7756 1756 D 1.2 1.5 0:06 mimedefang.pl
11780 defang 9 0 19204 11M 1788 D 1.2 2.3 0:07 mimedefang.pl
6497 defang 9 0 33040 4848 2000 D 1.0 0.9 0:18 mimedefang.pl
11655 defang 9 0 29084 8816 1840 D 1.0 1.7 0:09 mimedefang.pl
11815 defang 9 0 19164 10M 1752 D 1.0 2.0 0:06 mimedefang.pl
11664 defang 11 0 30260 9164 1872 D 0.8 1.7 0:08 mimedefang.pl
11666 defang 9 0 30240 10M 1872 D 0.8 2.0 0:08 mimedefang.pl
11766 defang 9 0 18888 9104 1844 D 0.5 1.7 0:07 mimedefang.pl
11787 defang 9 0 18884 8712 1752 D 0.5 1.6 0:06 mimedefang.pl
11844 defang 9 0 15384 9648 1756 D 0.5 1.8 0:06 mimedefang.pl
11918 root 9 0 1180 1180 1120 S 0.5 0.2 0:00 sendmail
30668 root 9 0 2748 2696 2620 S 0.3 0.5 0:01 radiusd
127 root 9 0 0 0 0 DW 0.1 0.0 5:53 kjournald
1530 root 9 0 1024 724 636 R 0.1 0.1 0:10 sshd
7244 defang 9 0 2104 1092 736 D 0.1 0.2 0:00 mimedefang
1 root 0 0 440 392 388 S 0.0 0.0 0:05 init
2 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd

and I see stuff like this in /var/log/maillog:

Jan 18 12:11:25 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[21674]: k0IH6FP3021674: Milter 
(mimedefang): timeout before data read
Jan 18 12:11:26 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[21747]: k0IH6HP3021747: Milter 
(mimedefang): timeout before data read
Jan 18 12:11:26 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[21744]: k0IH6GP3021744: Milter 
(mimedefang): timeout before data read
Jan 18 12:45:46 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[22534]: runqueue: Skipping queue run --  
load average too high
Jan 18 12:47:03 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[26841]: k0IHfigC026841: Milter 
(mimedefang): timeout before data read
Jan 18 12:47:05 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[17179]: k0IGktP3017179: timeout waiting 
for input from [61.248.170.203] during server cmd read
Jan 18 12:47:36 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[26845]: k0IHfkgC026845: Milter 
(mimedefang): to error state
Jan 18 12:47:37 Raydeus-Dee sendmail[26904]: k0IHfpgC026904: Milter 
(mimedefang): to error state

and an md-mx-ctrl status looks something like this:
[root at Raydeus-Dee init.d]# md-mx-ctrl status
Max slaves: 30
Slave 0: busy
Slave 1: busy
Slave 2: busy
Slave 3: busy
Slave 4: busy
Slave 5: busy
Slave 6: busy
Slave 7: busy
Slave 8: busy
Slave 9: busy
Slave 10: busy
Slave 11: busy
Slave 12: busy
Slave 13: busy
Slave 14: busy
Slave 15: busy
Slave 16: busy
Slave 17: busy
Slave 18: busy
Slave 19: busy
Slave 20: busy
Slave 21: busy
Slave 22: busy
Slave 23: busy
Slave 24: busy
Slave 25: busy
Slave 26: busy
Slave 27: busy
Slave 28: busy
Slave 29: busy

For the time being I have reverted my sendmail back to one that does not use 
mimedefang and mimedefang is not running. But my customers are really going 
to start complaining about spam. How can I figure  out what is happening 
with mimedefang and fix it so I can use it again?

Thanks,

Lisa Casey