[SA-exim] Re: [Exim] EXIM 4.31, courier-imap, Clamd, exiscan, spamassassinLoad problems

[Nigel Wade]

Doug Block wrote:
> Yes your right!!! On the spam and the courier
> Oh the sa-exim is working great so far on the scores.  I have had a 75% drop
> in spam and I have been using spam pit to check the scores which so far have
> been correct on both real mail and spam.  I may upgrade to 4.34 once I get
> some time since it came out today.
> 
> I have a older (half the speed) exim 4 box that handled the load for up 150
> users with courier-imap with out this problem but it did not have clamd,
> sa-exim, exiscan, and spamassassin on it.  This box worked fine for 18
> months+ but the virus's and spam where a big problem.  I have spam set to
> under 256k but I have been watching this while writing this email and I
> notice 8-12 messages at a time coming in and eating 100% of the cpu for
> about 5 secs while they get spamd and clamd.
> 
> Is this box to small for this load or should I start buying beer for people
> to audit my configs.  I have no problem getting a multi-proc box if that
> will solve the problem it maybe extream over kill.
> 
> 

A multi-processor box certainly isn't overkill - especially if it makes your 
mail system work. I have a dual-cpu mail server here for a much lower load.

What might be simpler in the short term is to utilize your old exim box as a 
spam/virus scanner. I don't know about clamd, but spamd can certainly be run 
on a different system to that which runs exim. Either spamc or exiscan can 
be setup to talk to spamd on a different host. If necessary, as a simple 
upgrade, put in the fastest processor that old box will take.

Also, do the "power" users receive most of their mail from trusted sources? 
If so, it may be possible to configure the system to not scan those messages.

-- 
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
             University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail :    nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Phone :     +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555