Topic: Spamassassin makes mail extremely slow.

[jsheets]

Everytime I enable Spamassassin on my SME7-RC1 Server it slows the mail sending and receiving down to the point where it takes up to 30 seconds to send or receive a single message.  When Spamassassin is running it increases the load average to between 1 and 2 which still shouldn't account for that much slowness, should it?  I was wondering if there are any configuration changes that I can make that will make SA run more efficiently and not slow down the mail so much.  Thanks!

[jsheets]

Update:
I reloaded the server from scratch and restored the backup just to make sure that nothing was messed up with the install itself, and after turning the SA back on when I tried to send a message spamd hung for about 4 minutes and message never sent.  When the SA is turned off everything works perfectly.

My Server is a Dell Poweredge with 3.0GHz Pentium Xeon processor, 2GB Ram and 2 250GB SATA HD's with Hardware Raid 1.  We will have about 100 users, but as of now there is only 2 for testing.  This server should be plenty to run SA without delay shouldn't it?  If anybody can think of a reason why this would do this please let me know.  I would really rather not run the server with SA turned off.  Thanks again!

[idyll]

I assume you have not enabled the RBL or DNSBL settings which are, by default, turned off on PR1? If you have, revert them to off and see how it behaves.

Do a search, there is some noise about this issue and how non-compliant servers can result in delays, etc in certain circumstances.

In my instance I see very little delay.

regards,

patrick

[jsheets]

If certain ports are blocked will it cause SA to hang?  If so, what ports need to be open in order for everything to function correctly?

[idyll]

I wasn't referring to any ports.

I was referring to this command...

config show qpsmtpd

which should show this output....

qpsmtpd=service
Bcc=disabled
BccUser=maillog
DNSBL=disabled
LogLevel=6
MaxScannerSize=25000000
RBLList=sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org,whois.rfc-ignorant.org,dnsbl.njabl.org,relays.ordb.org
RHSBL=disabled
RequireResolvableFromHost=no
SBLList=dsn.rfc-ignorant.org
access=public
status=enabled

[jsheets]

Sorry, I understood what you were saying and it behaves that way regardless of what settings I have tried on SA.  My port question was something else that I was wondering because I know that our ISP blocks everything until I tell them what needs open for a certain server.  I just thought that if SA was trying to do something on a certain port that is currently blocked that it may hang like it is doing.  Thanks though.

[idyll]

Your ISP blocks OUTBOUND ports?

Man, I'd lose them in a heartbeat. Life's too short for Draconian stuff like that.

good luck!

regards,

patrick

[jsheets]

Yeah, we are a school district so our A-Site basically blocks everything unless we ask for it.  It gets to be frustrating sometimes, especially in situations like this when I am trying to troubleshoot a problem and don't know if it is a problem with us or with them.  

[finchwizard]

Yeah, we are a school district so our A-Site basically blocks everything unless we ask for it.  It gets to be frustrating sometimes, especially in situations like this when I am trying to troubleshoot a problem and don't know if it is a problem with us or with them.  

Which is exactly why I broke away and took our College so that everything is managed in house.

I refuse to wait days for websites to be blocked and unblocked, ports opened and all the other rubbish.

[idyll]

OK, there are specific ports which CAN slow Spam Assassin. I am so unfamiliar with blocking outbound ports it didn't occur to me...

DCC, Razor and Pyzor use some specific ports in and out.

I think you need to poke around the spamassassin wiki and find out which specific ones you need to petition your ISP to open. I symphathise with you.

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/

I KNOW you can incur delays as the daemon tries to hook up with some of these distributed services, but I do NOT know if the delays can account for what you are seeing.

But it seems logical to pursue this.

regards,

patrick

[jsheets]

Update:
Okay, after getting all of the ports open that needed to be the Spamassassin is working perfectly.  Mail delay is back below a second.  Thanks for all the responses.  Below are the ports that I ended up having to open in case anybody ever needs them.

Outbound:
7/tcp
53/udp
783/tcp
2703/tcp
6277/udp
24441/udp

[idyll]

Glad to have helped.

Posting the ports is a great idea.

regards,

patrick