Re: Exim & spamd.. eating all my memory and cpu

Another approach is to cut down the number of connects that EXIM permits
to meet the capacity of your system. My current setting for a mailhub
model which routes email to other mailservers, are

smtp_accept_max = 100
smtp_accept_queue = 75
smtp_accept_reserve = 50
smtp_reserve_hosts = 139.133.0.0/16		[local network]
smtp_connect_backlog = 20
smtp_load_reserve = 3

These may need to be revised because of the latest version of
spamassassin and sophos. Connects are open longer since we introduced DCC
to spamassassin but this does not consume CPU.

We do not use spamassassin for locally generated messages and set the
limit to 50K for external. Sophos [virus scanning] is applied to "all"
messages.

We have a system that is used for expanding mailing lists [majordomo
perhaps moving to mailman] and messages from this system are not checked
for spam or viruses as the original message to the mailing list was
checked.

At the EXIM course a few years ago tuning EXIM was discsussed and although
there are guidelines, it is a matter of playing with the values to meet
your system and mail profile.

John Linn