Topic: Intermintent e-mail slowness

[Ted]

For the last couple of weeks my wife and I have experienced a "rhythmic" slowness of our e-mail (using Thunderbird in both Linux and Windows as well as Horde Webmail).  By "rhythmic" I mean that every night after midnight (around 2AM I think) email would slow down and remain slow until around 10AM the next morning.  By slow I mean it can take 20-30 minutes to download one text only email.  From VERY limited testing it seems that it MIGHT speed up if I disable virus scanning in the e-mail settings page.  I am a little unwilling to turn that off for a protracted period of time.  I have disabled the virus scanning on the server itself.

Server is a Dell server 2+ gHz, 1gig of mem and a 160gig SATA drive.  Running SME 7.2 with all current security updates.  Server only, attached to a Linksys BEFXS41 which connects to a cable modem connected to Comcast Cable.

Is this some new service that an update installed?  A bad link that the server is trying to connect to for updates? 

Thoughts?

Thanks

Ted

[thomasch]

For the last couple of weeks my wife and I have experienced a "rhythmic" slowness of our e-mail (using Thunderbird in both Linux and Windows as well as Horde Webmail).  By "rhythmic" I mean that every night after midnight (around 2AM I think) email would slow down and remain slow until around 10AM the next morning.  By slow I mean it can take 20-30 minutes to download one text only email. 

Ted,

Does slowness only happen to email ? How about accessing webpages? Any sluggishness noticed at around that time?
How about smeserver harddisk activity?

use 'htop ' and see what running job eats your CPU usage

thomas

[Ted]

I was unable to even ssh to the server until about 10 this morning.  As of now NO mail is downloading to windows or linux.

htop shows hotp using about .7-1.3% of CPU

spamd child is using 5.2% and 4.6% of memory (two different processes).  Total of 149 different processes, 1 running.

Several other Processes with spamd or clamd are using up 3.5-4.5% of memory  also.

Mem 217/1001MB
Swp  0/1983MB

If I could figure out how to post a screen shot here I would.

This is getting serious.  The wife wants her e-mail.

Ted

[Ted]

Looking at my "Server Manager" I find one other oddity that MIGHT be related.  Below Miscellaneous I have "Unknown" and in unknown I have two items listed.
77cd9aaac28540b08ba61f1796f0ddc6
(if you copy it and paste you get https://10.10.11.5/server-manager/cgi-bin/77cd9aaac28540b08ba61f1796f0ddc6 )
and
970e71d319633090930af92ef0af2eb4
(https://10.10.11.5/server-manager/cgi-bin/970e71d319633090930af92ef0af2eb4)

If you click on either of them I get this.

:::::::::::::::::::::;
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, admin and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
:::::::::::::::::::::::

I wonder if this is not the result of a failed update?

Ted

[thomasch]

I wonder if this is not the result of a failed update?

Ted

Ted,
Regarding oddity in server manager, you encounter a bug which fortunately can be resolved by updating your server.

read :

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=39248.msg179185#msg179185
http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3586

please update your server..
do yum update, and don't forget to do signal-config post-upgrade ; signal-config reboot

And hope this update fix your smeserver slowness problem too.

thomas

[Ted]

Good thought.  But yesterday I updated the server from 7.2 to 7.3 and the two errors are still there under "Unknown"

77cd9aaac28540b08ba61f1796f0ddc6
970e71d319633090930af92ef0af2eb4

Ted

[thomasch]

Good thought.  But yesterday I updated the server from 7.2 to 7.3 and the two errors are still there under "Unknown"

77cd9aaac28540b08ba61f1796f0ddc6
970e71d319633090930af92ef0af2eb4

Ted

Ted,

You need to remove the lines manually.

Code: [Select]

grep -rl 'Persisten' /etc/e-smith/web | xargs -r rm -f
this will clear the strange lines under 'Unknown'

Okay you updated to 7.3 , does this fix your Intermittent e-mail slowness problem?

thomas

[Ted]

I can not say if the problem has gone away yet or not.  A day or so before updating the server I disabled both spam filtering and virus scanning of e-mail.  Since then (or perhaps since the update) we have experienced no slowing.

Since this was an intermittent problem, I have not yet declared it cured.  I'll probably wait until Tuesday or Wednesday next week and if no slowing shows up I'll re-enable spam filtering.  I'll give that 5 days to a week then, if no slowing occurs, I'll enable virus scanning of e-mails.

I'll try "grep -rl 'Persisten' /etc/e-smith/web | xargs -r rm -f" in the next day or two and see if that cures the other "bug".  As root from the command line in ssh?

Thanks

Ted

[thomasch]

As root from the command line in ssh?

yes

[Ted]

Done.  It worked.

I'll report on the results of en-ableing SpamAssassen and then later virus checking.

Ted

[mmhas]

Guys,

I've got the same 'slowness' problem. Still trying to figure out why. I can send email (try send to myself) from any client ( webmail / OE / MThunderbird ). But the problem is it's SLOW. After the server being rebooted then, i'll get the mail. Is there anyone got the same problem

[Ted]

I am going to give my server a couple of days and see if the problem shows up again.  So for it has not, however in close order I updated it to 7.3, disabled SpamAssassan (I miss that a lot) and also disabled virus scanning of incoming and outgoing e-mails.

Probably on Wednesday night I'll re-enable SA and give that a week.  If the problem does not reoccur I'll re-enable virus scanning and see what happens then.  My gut feeling is that it was either an buggered update that got cleaned up when the server was updated to 7.3 or it was the anti virus.  But $4 and my gut feeling will get you a coffee at Starbucks.

All I can suggest for you is to do the above.  If that does not help then I can only hope that one of the MUCH more knowledgeable folk (then myself) on this list can help you.

Ted

[mmhas]

Thanks but FYI I've done this ...

1. Update 7.2 to 7.3 - successfully
2. Disable AntiSpam / AntiVirus - SA, fortunate for me that I've the Anti Spam / Anti Virus gateway running

Now waiting for good result (HOPE) ...