Topic: E-mail queue very slow

[neill]

Late last week, local delivery of e-mail slowed dramatically, taking over 4 hours for a message to get delivered locally.  Checking the e-mail queue, I have over 16000 messages pending.  I am running e-smith 5.6 on an Athlon server, with SA running as a filter.  Nothing has changed, except we had a fairly massive power failure late last week.

The queue seems to be running very slowly, but the processor usage is only about 28% (system) and 22% (user).  

I've installed the qmail queue management tool, but that only tells me exactly how poorly things are running.  The "force resend of queue" command produces no results.

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated, as our business is grinding to a halt without expedient e-mail.

TIA

[guest22]

The queue seems to be running very slowly, but the processor usage is only about 28% (system) and 22% (user).

Those percentages are NOT 'normal' regarding the situation you describe.

[smeghead]

.. this definately not normal - the only time I have seen this level of mail is on a system under attack with a virus and spam flood.

You will prob find that the system is maxed out on RAM which is why the whole thing is running poorly; more RAM will help.  You can also vary the number of SMTP process that smtpfront-qmail will handle concurrently so that it doesn't consume all the RAM.

/sbin/e-smith/db configuration setprop qmail ConcurrencyRemote 10
/sbin/e-smith/db configuration setprop qmail ConcurrencyLocal 5
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event email-update
/etc/init.d/qmail restart

Before doing this note the current settings and restore back once this process is done (or not!).

Is the server well patched?  Is the a/v and SA up to date?

My best advice would be to build a 6.0.1 box and use that - if not and you're prepared to loose some mail, then purge the /var/qmail/queue folders of all messages; I have some perl script for this process if you want them, just email me.

HTH