Topic: Server swap space problem - caused by AMaViS?

[ddougan]

I have a client with a 3 year old server currently running 5.6. It's been running well up till a few days ago, when, overnight, it stopped responding (and in fact, this was caused by the swap space filling up). Nothing has changed on the box for some time. It runs AMaViS and Sophos to check mail for viruses, and it would appear that this is what is chewing up the swap space. I left a top process running once per minute in batch, and when I monitored it this evening, I found that about 9.50 p.m., swap suddenly dropped from 215340K free (it's a 256 MB swap file; the system has 128 MB RAM) to basically zero. At the time it dropped, the amavis.log file shows 16 "Starting AMaViS 0.1.6.4" messages, and the top output file shows a simialr number of Perl and sweep (the Sophos engine) processes running. None are zombies.

Over the past several days this has occurred several times overnight - but seems to have been OK during the day when the user load is there.

Obviously the server could do with more RAM, but as it's been running well for a long time, and no system changes have been made, I'm wondering if there is something else going on.

I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks,

Des

[raem]

> ....a 3 year old server currently running 5.6.
> Obviously the server could do with more RAM, but as it's been running well for a long time,
> and no system changes have been made,
> I'm wondering if there is something else going on.

You have been lucky that the 5.6 box has run OK for this long with just 128Mb RAM. You have probably been close to lockup many times but didn't know it.
I don't think you have been running v5.6 for 3 years as it has not been around that long. You really needed to increase RAM to at least 256Mb when you did the upgrade to v5.6.

What has changed ? You are gettimg more messages with virus infections and this is making the server busier, using more RAM (of which there is not enough).
Increasing RAM to 256Mb should fix your problem. If you think of upgrading to v6.0 make sure you put in at least 512Mb even for light duty.

The above comments are based on my own experience (and significant frustration too).

To reduce the load on the server processor and RAM you might consider using my Virus blocking and Spam blocking HOWTOs to control excessive virus attachments and spam, although you will need to upgrade to v6.0 (oops need more RAM and ideally a faster processor).
See
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/
 
My 6.0 server is "just" running OK with a 333MHz processor and 384Mb RAM, any less RAM than that and it locks up, and it is doing pretty much the same work as when it was a v5.5 with 128Mb, and 5.6 with 256Mb. It seems like each OS upgrade needs a RAM upgrade too, and it's about time the server was replaced with a faster processor etc.

[smeghead]

Gotta agree with Ray here!

A client had EXACTLY the same prob and their case was exactly as stated by Ray.  In the end, after alot of testing (I also did full rebuild just in case) I found the PIII 500 server needed about 480MB RAM to cope with all but the most severe hits from spam & viruses (2-300 viruses per hour).  Now even on the major hits it is only slowing the sever down for a coupla minutes.

I installed Gordon Rowells stuff based on Rays howto and that cut the stress levels even more; it works great!

HTH

[ddougan]

Thanks for the replies - I was pretty sure it was RAM, and your help has underlined that.

Ray, I'll take a look at the Howtos you've written.

Regards,

Des

[zumba]

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