[Mimedefang] Extremely high mimedefang CPU usage issues...

[Kris Deugau]

Rick Mallett wrote:
> I don't know if this is relevant, since you already had a problem
> before upgrading, but I upgraded to 3.2.3 yesterday from 3.1.8 and the
> load average jumped from 3 to over 20 in the space of about 10
> minutes. I didn't have time to investigate so I quickly downloaded
> 3.1.9 and installed it and the load average went back down to 3.  I'm
> running sendmail 8.13.4 and mimedefang 2.63 and the only thing I
> upgraded was SpamAssassin so I'm pretty sure it was responsible for
> the increased load.

*nod*  I've held off on SpamAssassin upgrades more than once due to this 
problem - the new SA release may catch more spam, but it pushes the 
system load up anywhere from 10-20% to an order of magnitude, and bumps 
memory and CPU usage by about the same range.

I ran 2.64 patched for DNS-based URI scoring for close to two years 
after 3.x appeared due to reports of memory usage, CPU usage, and system 
load issues with 3.x - and the fact that my spam detection rate was 
still pretty good with 2.64.

I was able to upgrade the hardware to allow me to upgrade to 3.1 early 
this year.  I'm still running 3.1 on those machines, and I have no real 
incentive to upgrade because 3.1 is working fine.

(ClamAV is also tagging more and more non-virus mail, which keeps the SA 
load down.)

-kgd